“I love.” He set it down and kept digging until he found the large envelope, which she had procured at her first stop. Inside were several passports, bundles of American and Mexican currency, and five SIM cards, all retrieved from a safety deposit box in a downtown bank. There was a cache like it in nearly every major city in the world, set aside for just such a possibility. The box had also contained weapons, but Asya had, on King’s instructions, left those behind. Guns and knives would not help them make a stealthy exit from the country.
They had ditched the truck after putting a few miles between them and the cartel fighters, and continued on foot until reaching the outskirts of Mexico City. In their combat uniforms, they would almost certainly have drawn the attention of El Sol lookouts, so King had made the decision to send just one person into the city to retrieve the contents of the safety deposit box, and Asya had been the perfect choice. The cartel had not, as far as they knew, gotten a good look at any of them. It was a good bet that Beltran would assume they were all men. With her dark hair and Slavic accent and features, Asya would be the last person a potential El Sol informant would suspect of being part of an elite American combat unit. For her part, Asya felt well-suited to the task. A perennial fish out of water, she had developed a knack for adapting to strange environments. To her, the urban bustle of the Zocalo was no stranger than downtown Pinckney.
King slotted a SIM card into one of the phones and then handed it to her. “I’ll pass the rest of this stuff out to the others. You should probably head out now. I’ll call you to set up the rendezvous.”
Asya did not need to ask for clarification. The contingency plan for the situation in which they now found themselves called for the team to split up. They would go their separate ways to avoid attracting attention, and await further instructions. If any one of them was captured, he or she would not know the whereabouts of the others. Nevertheless, she hesitated. “Should we try to contact Thomas?”
King’s stony expression returned. “We’re on our own. Blue has his own problems.”
She frowned. “That is what I mean. We have to help him.”
“Asya, there’s a very good chance that Tom is—”
“No!” She shook her head vehemently. “Do not say it.”
King took a breath. “We aren’t going to be able to do anything until we’re clear of this mess.”
Asya knew he was right, but that was little comfort. “I want to know,” she said, barely louder than a whisper.
King pursed his lips in thought then took back the phone and started scrolling through the pre-loaded contact list. “Even if he got clear of Endgame, there’s no guarantee he’ll pick up.” He hit the ‘send’ button, then tapped another button, putting the phone in speaker mode. There was a trilling sound as the call went out, then a burst of static, followed by a tinny voice. “Hello?”
King’s eyes went wide in surprise. “Lew?”
Asya felt her heart sink. The person on the other end of the line was Lewis Aleman, not Thomas—not Deep Blue.
A strange sound issued from the speaker. It took Asya a moment to realize that it was a sigh of relief. “King. You’re alive. What’s your status? Is everyone…okay?”
“More or less, but we’re in the wind. What’s the situation at your end?”
“FUBAR.”
Asya had heard the others use the strange term before and knew that it meant nothing good.
“But better now that I know you guys are safe,” Aleman finished.
“‘Safe’ is a relative term.”
“Don’t I know it. Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll find a way to get you guys out of there.”
“What about Thomas?” Asya blurted, unable to contain herself.
“Bishop? Glad you’re still with us. The feds raided Endgame. I made it out. Hitched a ride to Manchester. I’m not sure about Blue and Dom.” He paused as if trying to figure out how to deliver bad news. “King, there’s something else you should know. It’s just hitting the news, but there’s something happening in North Carolina.”
“Sara?” Despite his customary reserve, there was real fear in King’s voice.
“I think it might be. The governor has declared a state of emergency. The Outer Banks are shut down. No one is getting in or out. Phones and Internet are down. But some of the reports that got out before the blackout are…well, pretty crazy.”
King’s expression became even grimmer. “How crazy?”
“People are using the words ‘zombie apocalypse.’”
“Lew, I need you to look something up for me.”
“Uh, okay. What?”
“El Sol is running a meat supply company. Azteca. Maybe legit, maybe not. I need to know who they’re supplying.”
There was a long silence, and Asya wondered if Aleman was as confused by the abrupt non sequitur as she was. Although she was still in shock over what they had discovered in the slaughterhouse, she could not believe that King was more interested in taking down Beltran than he was in the fact that his fiancée was caught in the middle of a disease outbreak.
The real reason for Aleman’s silence became apparent a moment later. “Azteca is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mid-Atlantic Diversified Holdings LLC. MAD-H looks like a shell company, probably a money laundering outfit for El Sol.”
“I don’t care who owns them,” King snapped. “Where does the meat go?”
“I’m not sure, but MAD-H also owns a fast food chain, Mr. Pig.”
King’s eyes narrowed. “Never heard of them.”
“They’re pretty new. Real big in the South, but they have stores in D.C. and New York.”
“And North Carolina?”
“Sure.”
“But is that possible?” King asked. “How could they get tainted meat, let alone human meat, into the country and onto plates? Wouldn’t the FDA catch it?”
“First,” Aleman said, “that’s nasty. Seriously. Second, we’re talking about the FDA, which presents a few problems. They’re so understaffed and underfunded that they operate primarily on the honor system, taking action only after the fact, when people get sick. Also, Beltran is probably smuggling the meat across the border and combining it with shipments from legitimate, and inspected, facilities. But probably most important, when the FDA does do inspections, they test for things like fecal bacteria, but not whether the pork is actually pork. So it’s not only possible, it’s probably easy.”
King frowned. “You have to get me to North Carolina, Lew.”
This time, confusion was the only possible explanation for the long silence.
“Lew?”
“I’m here. This is weird. I’m getting another call.”
43
Rochester, New Hampshire
With a population of almost thirty thousand, Rochester was a sprawling metropolis compared to sleepy little Pinckney, but Duncan nevertheless felt conspicuous as he followed Boucher into the restaurant. It was a 1950s nostalgia-themed diner, surrounded by classic cars, the sort of place that might be frequented by tourists, and where an unfamiliar face might not set the jungle telegraph humming with gossip. Of course, his face was not exactly unfamiliar; he had won New Hampshire handily in both elections, and even though he had been out of the public spotlight for years, he was by no means unrecognizable. He pulled the visor of his borrowed baseball cap down low to cover his face and slid into one of the booths.
His apprehension proved unnecessary. Not a single head turned in their direction. Even the wait-staff seemed oblivious to their arrival. All eyes were fixed on the wall-mounted television in one corner. The set was tuned to a twenty-four hour cable news outlet. The fiery graphics that dominated one side of the screen displayed a map of the eastern seaboard, with the state of North Carolina highlighted in red, and superimposed letters that read: “Hot Zone!”
Duncan squinted to read the captions accompanying footage of National Guard soldiers manning barricades, but it was almost impossible to make sense of the disjointed comme
ntary. As usual, the talking heads were filling up air time with random speculation, but the gist of the story was that the Outer Banks islands of North Carolina had been placed under a strict quarantine due to a possible disease outbreak.
“That’s not good,” Boucher said. “But at least it’s keeping us out of the headlines.”
“Sara Fogg is there,” Duncan said. “And Anna Beck. They’re in the thick of it.”
Chastened, Boucher lowered his gaze and lapsed into a silence that ended when a middle-aged waitress appeared a moment later to greet them. “Coffee? You gents look like you could use a whole pot.”
“You’re not wrong,” Boucher replied. “Our car broke down and we had to hoof it in from the turnpike.”
It was partly true. The DPVs had born them through the submerged Dock exit and as far as the southeastern tip of Lake Winnipesaukee. A shuttered fishing cabin had yielded a few articles of clothing to supplement their wardrobe with warm flannel shirts and the cap that now shaded Duncan’s face. They had indeed walked for several miles, until a man driving a pickup had taken pity on them, pulling over and jerking a thumb at the cluttered bed, which had been fine with Duncan.
“You should have called the auto club.”
Boucher spread his hands guiltily. “No phone. Actually, do you have a phone we could borrow? I’d be happy to pay.”
The woman, who was already digging her cell phone out of her pocket, flashed him a stern ‘how dare you even suggest such a thing’ look, and handed it over. Boucher returned the same smile he had once used to recruit assets in the early days of his career as an operations officer. As she headed to the kitchen to place their breakfast order, Boucher slid the phone across the table to Duncan.
“Nicely done,” Duncan remarked, as he picked the device up and dialed a number from memory. The phone rang several times, and with each iteration, his sense of dread grew, but then to his surprise, a tentative voice said: “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
Aleman’s shock was almost palpable over the line. “Blue? You made it out.”
“We did. Have you been able to re-establish contact with the team?”
“Believe it or not, I’ve got King on the other line. Hang on. I’ll conference.”
For the first time since their escape from the Dock, Duncan allowed himself a relieved sigh. King’s voice sounded in his ear a moment later. “Blue?”
He thought he heard another voice, Bishop perhaps, say, “Thomas?” but it was probably his imagination. “I’m here, King. What’s your situation?”
“We’re alive.” King said it quickly, as if the question was irrelevant. “Did Aleman brief you on the situation in North Carolina?”
Duncan glanced at the television screen. “I’m aware of what’s happening there. I know you must be sick with worry about Sara, but there’s not much we can do to help her right now. We’ve got bigger problems—”
“Believe me, we don’t.”
In all the years they had worked together, Duncan had never known King to put anything ahead of the mission. Neither was he prone to exaggeration. “I’m listening.”
“Are you familiar with the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island?”
“The first British colony in North America,” Duncan answered. “They vanished without a trace. To this day, no one knows what happened to them.”
“I know.”
Duncan had no response to that. He was well aware of King’s unique perspective on history. Two years earlier, King had, to all appearances, been killed in an explosion during a mission to North Africa. But just a few hours later he had reappeared, not only alive and well, but making the astonishing claim that he had been transported back in time. Supplied with an immortality serum by the creator of the time travel device, King had been subjected to a journey through the ages, living one lifetime after another in the shadows, awaiting the moment when he could rejoin the team in the present. As preposterous as the story had sounded, Duncan knew that King was not given to flights of fancy. The simplest explanation, particularly in light of some of the other unbelievable things they had all witnessed, was that King had been telling the truth, so when he spoke on matters of history, Duncan took his word for it.
“The winter of 1588 nearly wiped the colonists out. Food was so scarce that some of them resorted to cannibalism. When the others learned what had happened, they hanged the suspected offenders, which oddly enough meant there was enough food for the rest to survive, but that rough justice wasn’t good enough for the Secotan tribe, who lived nearby. Cannibalism was their ultimate taboo, and for good reason.
“The Secotan were Algonquins. They believed, as many of their descendants still do today, that when a person consumes the flesh of another human, they open themselves up to possession by a powerful, demonic force, and transform into a creature called a ‘wendigo.’ A revenant. A living ghost with a ravenous appetite for human flesh.
“The Secotan suspected that some of the surviving colonists had also secretly turned to cannibalism, so they tested the survivors by exposing them to… I guess you could call it wendigo ‘essence.’ It’s a secretion, some kind of pheromone. It might contain a virus… I don’t really know for sure, but anyone who had eaten human flesh would almost immediately become a wendigo. Unfortunately for the colonists, there were a few secret cannibals in their midst. They became wendigos and went on a rampage, killing all but a handful of the survivors, who managed to escape and were later assimilated into the tribe.”
Duncan broke in. “And you think what’s happening now is related to what happened four hundred and thirty years ago?”
Across the table, Boucher raised a questioning eyebrow.
King did not answer directly. “Lew, you said people are calling this a zombie plague?”
Aleman’s reply was guarded. “Some of the initial, and I should add unverified, reports coming out the area did indicate that.”
“Creatures with distorted limbs and transparent skin,” King supplied. “This is happening right now.”
Duncan immediately saw a flaw in the argument. “You said that only a cannibal can become one of these things. So how can it be happening now?”
As King explained what they had discovered in Beltran’s slaughterhouse, how it connected to the international meat supply, Duncan felt his gorge rise. “He’s doing it on purpose? For God’s sake, why?”
“I don’t think this is a coincidence. The Secotan weren’t the only people to believe that cannibalism could unleash powerful supernatural forces. Ceremonial consumption of fallen enemies was part of the rituals for worshipping Huitzilopochtli. Beltran is trying to resurrect the old religion.”
“You’re saying that Beltran wanted this to happen? He intentionally contaminated the meat supply to make this outbreak happen?” The full weight of what King was telling him hit home. “There are hundreds of those restaurants all across the eastern US.”
“He’s probably been doing it for years. Feeding his victims to wild pigs, or just grinding them up and turning them into sausage. Anyone who’s ever had even a taste of tainted meat is at risk for becoming infected, if even one of those things gets past the quarantine. Even if containment works, it will mean certain death, one way or another, for the thousands of people on those islands.”
Including Sara and Anna, Duncan thought.
“There’s something else to consider,” King continued. “There’s a reason why nobody knows the truth about what happened to the Lost Colony. The wendigo contagion is exactly the sort of thing that could be turned into a deadly weapon. Now do you see why I have to be there?”
Duncan was only faintly aware of Boucher’s uncomprehending gaze. In the face of what King had just revealed, Marrs’s diabolical schemes seemed like a petty high school rivalry.
Four years earlier, he had willingly given up the presidency to save the Chess Team, not to mention the world. Could he do any less now?
“I do,” he said at length. “Stand by. I’ll call you ba
ck when I’ve made the arrangements.”
He ended the call and met Boucher’s stare. “Change of plans.”
Boucher gestured to the television screen. “Something to do with that?”
Duncan nodded.
“Meanwhile, you’ll be doing what exactly?”
“Don’t worry about me.” He entered another number into the phone. It rang once before the call was picked up. “Please connect me with DAG Taits.”
Boucher’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Tom, what the hell?”
“I know where he is,” Duncan said in response to the receptionist on the other end of the line. “He’ll want to take this call. Tell him it’s Tom Duncan.”
He cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Boucher again. “You should probably go.”
44
Mexico
For what was probably the first time in his military career, King felt neither excitement nor relief at the sight of the C-17 Globemaster rolling down the remote airstrip, trailed by a cloud of dust. Instead, he felt only apprehension. If not for Aleman’s assurance that Deep Blue himself had arranged for the USAF transport plane to come and retrieve them, to say nothing of the urgent need to reach the Outer Banks as soon as possible, he would probably have stuck with the original plan to disperse the team and lay low. And despite the fact that he trusted Deep Blue implicitly, as the plane rolled to a stop, about a hundred yards from where he stood waiting, King still half expected to see a squad of soldiers swarming down the cargo ramp to take him into custody.
There was, however, only one man in the cargo bay of the plane, and he was, technically speaking, not a soldier, but a sailor.
The man was middle-aged and African-American, with black hair just starting to go gray. He wore USMC desert digital camouflage fatigues without nametapes or rank. When he made eye contact with King, he executed a sharp left turn and strode quickly across the intervening distance.
“You Sigler?” He had to shout to be heard over the noise of the still turning jet engines.
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