That was fine. She knew that no battle plan, no matter how well thought out, survived the first few seconds of contact with the actual enemy. In the end, they would have to wing it. However, before the fight started she would leave nothing to chance, so she kept an eye on Karen and Jason, as well as the guards.
Then when she finished another batch of growth medium she checked on Avery. He was engrossed in the task of setting up the Petri dishes on an expanding array of metal racks.
“How is it going?” she asked.
He didn’t hear her the first time, or the second time
After the third time Avery turned to her and said, “What?”
“How is it going?” she repeated.
“Okay, we’ll have plenty of cultures when we get some virus,” he said. Then he studied the harvesting section of the lab, where Karen and Jason were still working on a centrifuge. “I think they will have trouble keeping up with us.”
His tone was flat and his eyes weren’t right. Avery wasn’t okay, she realized. Of course, none of them were okay but he seemed especially detached—as if Margaret’s death had unmoored him. Well, if Alex did her job he would live long enough to recover.
In the meantime, she had to make sure he didn’t have a meltdown.
For now, he was functional, and that would have to be enough.
* * * *
“Morgan, we may have a location for you,” Bloch’s voice said through the comm. “Something for you to check out.”
“What is it?” Morgan asked.
“It’s not much, but we had an active burn pit. It’s not under a state or local authority. Not a municipal site. But it checks out as the sort of thing the terrorist lab would need if they had an accident. Shepard says it’s too close to the nearest building for a proper HAZMAT burn site. If that’s our lab, Shepard says that any burn pit would have to be a minimum of half a mile away, but we’re assuming the Chechens may be cutting some corners.”
“How big is the pit?” Morgan asked.
“Twenty by thirty feet, big enough to incinerate any mistakes,” she said.
“Would you say that it’s big enough to hold twenty bodies?” Morgan asked.
Bloch didn’t respond immediately. Clearly, that wasn’t something she had considered.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that sounds like a pit big enough to hold twenty bodies—presuming they belonged to people you didn’t need after they had served your purpose,” Morgan said. He had seen a few mass graves in his time. They had always given him chills.
And Alex is in that lab. And when their work is done, the terrorists won’t need her or any of the students anymore, he thought.
“We don’t know this is it. We’re still trying to check out the ownership, looking at delivery records. I’ll send you the coordinates and you can look at it in person.”
“By all means look into everything, but tell me one thing first: is there any earth moving equipment nearby?” Morgan said.
“What?”
“A backhoe, bulldozer, something you would use to fill in the pit if you were in a hurry, if you wanted to bury bodies,” Morgan asked.
That time, he actually heard Bloch gasp.
“Wait, let me talk to Shepard,” she said. Less than thirty seconds passed and then she came back on the line. “Yes, there’s a backhoe, but I’m not sure that proves anything. It was likely used to dig the pit. This may turn out to be nothing.”
“I know, but it’s the best lead we have and you want me to check it out,” Morgan said. “And next you’re going to tell me not to do anything stupid when I get there.”
“We can’t take any chances. If that’s an active lab, we don’t know what they have in there. It hasn’t been long but…we just don’t know.”
“So if I find anything you want me to wait for backup?”
“Of course.”
“Fair enough, how long until you land?” he asked.
Bloch gasped. For the second time in the conversation, Morgan had surprised her.
“I can hear that you’re in a plane. I presume it’s a mobile command and you’re on your way out here,” he said.
“Yes,” she said flatly. “I think you’re right Morgan. I think they didn’t stray far from San Francisco.”
“Shepard is with you?” he asked.
“Yes, and a Tach team,” she said. “We’re a couple hours behind you.”
Morgan saw the location come through on his phone. It was about a hundred and twenty miles away. On the desert roads they would be there in 90 minutes if they pushed it.
And Morgan intended to push it.
Even if this location didn’t pan out, his gut told him they were on the right track. And more importantly, Bloch’s gut was telling her the same thing…and that was unprecedented.
But first, he’d have to get Dobrynin out of bed. He considered leaving the Russian behind, but the man was committed to the mission—though for very different reasons than Morgan himself.
And at any rate, Morgan knew that if he did find something out there he could use Dobrynin’s help and his skills. He wouldn’t let pride or their troubled history get in the way of this mission—the stakes were simply too high.
“I’m on my way,” Morgan said, closing the connection.
Chapter 32
“How many do you think there are?” Conley whispered.
Dani listened to the headset and said, “Four.”
That was it then. They had almost completely cleared the hotel, at least the east tower. And because of the incident at the skyway and the others they had taken out, there was at least a fair chance that these were the only terrorists left in the hotel.
They were close, but four armed men were still four armed men. Any assault was risky. He and Dani would have surprise on their side and she was good, but Conley wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances.
He told her what he was thinking.
“We’ve already used that,” she said.
“Yes, but they don’t know that and their friends can’t tell them,” he said.
They crept down past the lobby to the basement level. Then Conley headed for the tunnel that connected the towers. There, they took up defensive positions.
Once again, Dani coached him on the words and the pronunciation. When she was satisfied, he switched on his own headset and shouted into the microphone in Filipino, “Major assault from the roof! Many soldiers. The east tower is lost. We are coming down. Head for the basement, look for a tunnel!”
Then, for emphasis, Conley fired off a few rounds from his AK-47 right next to the mike and turned off the headset.
Then they waited.
It took a few minutes before they heard anything. Clearly, the remaining MILF gunmen were being cautious. Their operation had not gone as planned. They had suffered heavy losses and had no contact with their people—other than the message they had just received from Conley.
They were scared and that was good.
Conley heard footsteps. Then he heard one of the men call out in Filipino. Dani and Peter kept silent.
One of the black-clad terrorists peeked around the corner. Satisfied, the man waved behind him and stepped into the narrow passageway. Another terrorist stepped out and the two men walked together, leading with their rifles.
That was it. Just the two of them. Conley understood that there were two more waiting in the lobby. If they got the all clear from these two, the others would follow.
Conley waited until one of them activated his headset and finished speaking. Then Conley fired as Dani did the same. He took out the man on the left while she took out the one on the right.
As they stepped over bodies, Conley could hear frantic voices coming through the headset. Let them sweat, he thought.
How many lives had this
group ended today? How many people had died in terror because of this bunch?
By now they knew their operation had been a failure. They hadn’t gotten to the high-level officials they had wanted. And they had lost the hotel. Let them stew on that as they waited for what came next.
Though the terrorists had lost, this had hardly been a victory for Conley and Dani. Too many people had died for that to be true. And there were troubling elements of this operation.
As they headed up to the lobby, Conley said to Dani, “Better if we take them alive. Tell them to throw down their weapons and wait with their hands behind their heads in the center of the lobby.”
Dani spoke into the headset.
She repeated whatever she’d said. No reply.
“Then I guess we do this the hard way,” he said as they stepped onto the lobby floor.
Two shots rang out.
They came from behind the registration desk and were followed by two thuds as the terrorists fell to the floor. It could have been a trick, yet Conley was sure that it was not. It was over. The terrorists had killed themselves.
That was unfortunate. They would have had some value alive.
He and Dani approached the desk carefully and confirmed what they both knew. It really was over.
They headed to the café and put down their guns but kept them nearby.
There was nothing they could do but wait. Conley considered trying to find an exit but it was safer to wait until the authorities made their way inside.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long.
There was a loud screech and the sound of scraping metal. Then the garbage trucks that blocked the front doors and windows were dragged away. A few minutes later, soldiers poured into the lobby.
Conley reached into his pocket, pulled out Dani’s passport, and handed it to her. They stayed behind cover and Conley called out, “We need help. We’re Americans.”
There was a beat and then and a voice replied in English, “Come out slowly, with your hands on your head.”
Conley and Dani complied. By the time they were in the open there were dozens of soldiers in the lobby.
The officer in charge approached them and said, “Any survivors in the area?”
“I don’t think so. We came from upstairs. Anyone who is left up there is in the guest rooms.”
“Are you hurt?” the officer asked.
Conley and Dani shook their heads.
“Come. You can put your hands down. You’re safe now. There’s a holding area across the street,” he said.
* * * *
Bloch looked over Shepard’s shoulder. The satellite image was clear. Next to the rectangular pit was what appeared to be a small bulldozer. It was the kind of machine that would have been used to dig a pit that size.
Shepard was still trying to track down the company that now owned the place and then determine when the earth mover had been purchased. However, it was more than likely that Morgan would be there before he found those answers.
Bloch checked her watch and confirmed her math. Then she studied the satellite image again. There was something very unnerving about the backhoe posed in front of a mound of dirt just outside the pit—as if were standing ready to fill in the hole.
Everyone else on the private jet was sleeping or sitting quietly. However, Shepard was frantically at work in the computer area.
Like the aircraft itself, the workstation was impressive. Both belonged to Scott Renard, the billionaire gentleman friend of Lily Randall. It was part of the small fleet of private jets owned by his tech company.
This jet now carried a five-person Tach team that included both Lily Randall and Alicia Schmitt—who both had taken a personal interest in Alex Morgan. The very spacious aircraft—really a medium-sized passenger jet—also carried all of their gear as well as Bloch and Jenny Morgan.
Mrs. Morgan had insisted on coming, and Bloch knew better than to argue for long with a Morgan. Jenny had contributed quite a bit so far and, given the fact that her daughter was likely in the lab, it was hard to justify keeping her off the jet.
Surprisingly, Jenny was asleep in one of the plush, leather seats of the plane. Once they had gotten under way, she had actually been able to relax—or at least let herself pass out from lack of sleep.
Shepard, on the other hand, was working furiously, analyzing satellite images as he did five other things at once—including hacking into various secure databases to find out about their current target site. He was also conferring with Lily Randall while on the phone with Scott Renard’s people to sort out helicopter and ground transport for the Tach team.
Though Renard was out of the country, he had been a huge help. Besides transport and support, he had also given them the run of one of his corporate offices outside of San Francisco to use as a command center. Bloch could have arranged all of those things with the CIA and the American military, but the bureaucracy and its attendant inertia would have cost them valuable time. Because of Renard they would be on the ground in San Francisco in less than two hours—in a private jet that Bloch knew was traveling suspiciously close to Mach 1.
And Bloch was glad for all of it.
The image of the mini bulldozer poised to fill in a pit that could very well soon hold twenty bodies if Morgan was right stuck in her mind. The end of the world was still a concern and a very real one. But it was theoretical. There was something about that pit that was all too real.
Initially, she had been concerned that Morgan would get there first. She had even considered waiting to tell him about the fire pit. He was more than likely to go in without backup and without a plan. He had certainly done it often enough before.
Yet for the first time since she had known him, Bloch was glad for that reckless nature. Someone had to stop the terrorists before they hurt their hostages and got what they were after.
If anyone could do it, it was Morgan.
* * * *
Conley noted that it wasn’t long before hotel guests started showing up at the holding area, the lobby of a movie theater half a block away. That was good. Within fifteen minutes there were a dozen survivors around them. Ten minutes later there were fifty.
Some were shaken, some were shattered, but they were alive.
Conley was glad that he’d been able to help stop the terrorists. Of course, he hadn’t done it alone. He was only alive because of a part-time security guard named Amado—a retiree who had had taken a job at the hotel to get out of the house for a few hours a day and to make some extra money for himself and his wife. There was also a sharp-eyed sniper or two who had helped on the skybridge. And, of course, Dani had taken down quite a few terrorists while also saving Conley’s life. He wanted to talk to her about a number of things but he didn’t want to risk it until they were far away from the scene. He just enjoyed sitting close to her in silence. They were playing the part of a man and wife who had just been through an ordeal.
Conley’s phone beeped and he saw that cell service had been restored. Excellent. It would be time to get moving soon. He still had to get Dani out of the country. It might be a bit trickier now after a major terror attack, but this was, after all, part of what he did.
No one had come to talk to them yet, which was good. The police and soldiers outside were still clearing the hotel and collecting survivors. It was already getting chaotic in the movie theater and the survivors had started to wander away from the lobby.
The harried police told them to stay close but otherwise ignored them. That was Conley and Dani’s cue. They shuffled away slowly, ambling into one of the auditoriums.
They wandered down the aisle and then slipped outside an exit door. The afternoon light greeted them. There was no one on the street and they simply walked away.
A policeman rushed past them and told them to stay away from the hotel as it was a “Dangerous Area.” That
was fine. Conley and Dani put a few blocks between themselves and the hotel, and then they hit a street that wasn’t exactly bustling but had enough people that two more weren’t unusual.
Conley saw that cell service had been restored and called Bloch, giving her a very brief rundown of what had happened. She was glad he was alive but kept her voice brusque and businesslike. She told him she had a contingency plan and would get them out on an American military transport. Then Bloch was in a hurry to get off the phone, telling him that a car would pick them up soon and giving him the address of a local coffee shop.
They found the place. It was tiny, but empty, which wasn’t surprising given the activity just a few blocks away. They sat down with their coffee as a television on the wall showed a report on the attack.
He saw that there had been a bloody battle when the terrorists took the west tower as well as the east, and then the screen flashed a photo of a man Conley recognized. It was a picture of Amado in his uniform, smiling broadly.
“It’s Amado,” Dani said, with a slight gasp.
Underneath the photo a text crawl read, “Hotel security guard helps defeat terrorists and is injured in the attack. Hailed as a hero.”
They don’t know the half of it, Amado, Conley thought. A black sedan pulled up to the coffee shop. The diplomatic plates matched the ones Bloch had given him.
Conley got up and took Dani’s hand. It was time; their ride was here.
Chapter 33
There was some commotion in the molecular bio section of the lab. Kattab was there with another terrorist at his side as they talked to Dr. Spellman.
The man was clearly at home in his scrubs and lab coat, his assistants all wearing the same outfit. It was like a uniform and the whole scene seemed relatively normal—if you could ignore the fact that Spellman and his team were working at gunpoint to build a terrible weapon for monsters.
And worst of all, it was clear to Alex that they were making good progress. Karen had said that it would take a few days to make any useful quantity of the virus, but how long would it take them to get their very first samples? Two days?
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