The Days Before: A Prequel to the Five Roads to Texas series (A Five Roads to Texas Novel Book 8)

by Brian Parker

  Sidney rolled her eyes. “You have got to get a better phrase. I think everyone stopped using that one in 1983.”

  Jimmie shrugged. “Are you gonna stop by or not?”

  “He’s the cute one?” she asked, trying to remember the pictures he’d showed her of all of the old rowing crew together a few months ago.

  “I’m the cute one, Sweetie. But, yes, Lincoln is a handsome man.”

  Sidney sighed. She hated blind dates. They were almost as fun as a pap smear. Jimmie had a point, though. Meeting up at a bar and not doing an actual date was too easy to walk away from if things got weird. “Okay. I’ll stop by and meet this guy.”

  Jimmie hugged her. “Good. I promise you that you won’t regret it. He’s a really good guy.”

  “Oh yeah? Then why’s he single?”

  Her friend frowned. “Why are you single? Shit happens and we all get caught up in the rat race of work and paying bills.” He held up his phone. “I’ve gotta get to my massage appointment. I’ll text you, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she replied, accepting another hug. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget.”

  “You better not, Sidney,” he said. “Or believe me, you’ll regret it.”

  The dark water of the Potomac River passed by quickly as Lincoln pulled the scull efficiently through the water. He’d been rowing for as long as he could remember. It was his preferred type of exercise. Rowing gave him a full-body workout without all the jarring movements of Crossfit that so many of his friends were into these days. Plus, the river was usually calm and peaceful when he was out there at 6 a.m. It gave him a chance to think and organize his schedule for the day.

  He had a long, boring day of client meetings ahead of him. It was shaping up to be one of those days that he didn’t even have the opportunity to go to the restroom because he’d be busy all day. While it usually made the time pass quickly, he hated those kinds of days. Then again, he’d had jobs where there was literally no work to be done and the hours dragged by. There had to be a happy medium somewhere.

  He’d worked up the kind of sweat that soaked through his hoodie by the time he guided the scull back to the dock. The chilly morning air cooled him rapidly once the boat was out of the water and in its rack, padlocked until tomorrow morning when he’d repeat the workout.

  Lincoln lived in Georgetown, just about five blocks from the harbor where he stored his scull. Since he lived so close, he almost always walked back. The steep uphill sidewalks helped to stretch out his hamstrings and added a little bit extra to his workout. At thirty-five, he needed all the help he could get to help stay trim.

  He was thoroughly chilled by the time he made it home, stretched on his small front porch, and then went inside for a shower. The news continually reused terms like “polar vortex” and “bomb cyclone” each year. He wasn’t sure what in the hell this latest cold front was called, but it was only twenty-three degrees in the middle of March. Global warming is kicking my ass, he chuckled, turning on the shower.

  While he was scrubbing the grime from his hair, a text message came in. He rinsed the shampoo from his hair and hands, then grabbed his cell phone. It was a group text from Kevin reminding The Crew that they were getting together next Friday night for drinks at their old crew bar, 1776 Tavern. Lincoln didn’t go there as often as he’d like to, but back in the day, he and the members of his rowing team had closed the place down nearly every Wednesday through Sunday.

  He wasn’t much of a drinker anymore. He didn’t like losing control. There would be the mandatory congratulatory shot for Kevin, who was celebrating the fact that his wife was pregnant—again—but that was it. This time, his friend would be adding a son to balance out the current four-to-one female to male ratio in his house, so it was kind of a big deal.

  The one shot was all Lincoln would drink. There was no way he would get out of control. What if a client saw him acting like a fool? Worse, what if an ex-girlfriend was there and he made the mistake of hooking up with her when he was drunk and vulnerable?

  One drink and that would be it, he promised.

  “Doctor Erickson, can you repeat what you just said? My old ears aren’t what they used to be.”

  Riley smiled along with the group of chuckling reporters who were present in the small hearing room of the Dirksen Building. “Of course, Congresswoman Chambers,” she said once the laughter had died down. “I said, we have reports of a new type of illness in South America that was previously only observed in Africa with a one hundred percent fatality rate.”

  “And why has this disease not been reported before?” the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery asked.

  Riley cleared her throat. “I, ah… I was the field biologist who discovered the illness in The Congo, but rebels from Rwanda destroyed the village where the event occurred. At least that’s what the Congolese government claimed. Whoever did it burned the village to the ground, murdered all one hundred and thirteen of the residents, and destroyed every blood sample and field note that my colleague and I had collected. There was no evidence to corroborate our observations.”

  “That’s an impressive story,” the congresswoman said, leaning back and resting her forearms across her massive chest. “Am I gonna have to pay for admission to this or is it just a free preview?”

  “With all due respect, Congresswoman, this is serious. Whatever was in that jungle killed everyone who contracted it. Initial examinations of the contaminated blood in the field mimicked some aspects of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, and the people who we examined before they died were extremely aggressive and violent. Their minds degenerated rapidly, progressing through several stages of violence before their bodies shut down completely and they died.”

  The rotund woman leaned forward. “Where’s your proof, Doctor Erickson? In your opening statement, you said that this is potentially a threat to our national security, but the only evidence you have are reports written to the CDC, which is your employer, by you. There is zero corroboration of the supposed events. In fact, my office reached out to the Congolese government after I read one of your reports. Would you like to know what they said about this town, ah…?” She searched through the paperwork in front of her. “Here it is. Bena Makima. You know what they said about that town?”

  Riley nodded. She’d read their official statements for almost eighteen months now. “They deny the existence of any town.”

  “That’s right, Doctor. They said the term Bena Makima was a reference to a local gathering point where people waited for boats to take them up and down the river. Your supposed village was a bus stop that’s no longer used, not a full scale village as you claim. So right off the bat, your story is suspect. On top of that, you don’t even have any evidence.”

  “Ms. Chambers, I already told you that the samples were destroyed by whomever razed the village.”

  “Mmm hmm. Pretty convenient if you ask me.” She shifted her bulk in the chair. It creaked in protest. “I am not going to authorize any further funds toward your little project unless you can provide evidence to this subcommittee that there is a legitimate threat to the United States in the form of a new disease that nobody’s heard of before.”

  Riley’s mind raced. How could she provide evidence if there was no funding for research? “Congresswoman, please. Let me go to Brazil and attempt to gather samples down there. I’ve been in contact with their top medical doctors. I can get blood samples within a few weeks and analyze them at my lab in Atlanta.”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Excuse me?” Riley coughed.

  “You have two weeks to show this subcommittee real, tangible evidence of a deadly new illness in South America or I will request that all funding for your department be cut off.”

  “Congresswoman, my department has…” She thought for a moment. “Twelve scientists in it. Just because we haven’t found the—”

  “Two weeks, Dr. Erickson. You have two weeks
to produce your evidence.”

  The congresswoman heaved upward and shuffled out of the room. Riley sat in muted shock, waiting for the next congressperson to come in and ask questions.

  No one else bothered to show up for her testimony.

  TWELVE

  * * *

  WASHINGTON, DC

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK

  Something warm tickled the sole of Grady’s left foot, waking him. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling, but it was unexpected and most definitely not normal.

  “What?” he said groggily. He lay on his stomach, squinting in the near darkness of an unfamiliar room.

  Some type of small, furry creature bounded from where it lay on his legs up to his back and barked at him—more correctly, it yipped at him with a high-pitched squeak. He rolled onto his side and the animal, a dog of some kind, hopped back toward his legs.

  The sound of falling water from the next room caught his attention. Who’s that?

  Grady lifted his head from the pillow, feeling a cool rush of air around the wetness of his lips. He rubbed at his face, feeling odd indentions in the skin of his cheek. He rubbed again, they were long, parallel lines. It was too dark where he lay, but he could make out the lighted outline of a door across the room.

  He set his face back down and frowned at the wetness of the cushion underneath him, realizing that the lines on his face matched the fabric of the couch underneath him.

  “Where am I?” he groaned.

  The darkness was pierced by blinding white light and an oval of darkness appeared around the side of the door. “Awake?”

  “Ugh,” he replied.

  “Coffee maker is in the kitchen; coffee is in the can next to it. Can you make a pot?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.” What the fuck am I doing in Hannah’s apartment?

  The light disappeared, leaving the small outline. He stared at the doorway, realizing the door wasn’t closed all the way. He saw the line of her shoulder and followed it down the creamy white skin along her back until her butt curved out behind the doorframe and then out of sight. The sound of the shower curtain sliding into place preceded his view being blocked by the dark piece of fabric.

  Grady pushed himself up from the couch, and tried to remember how the hell he’d ended up there. He remembered switching from beer with dinner to scotch afterward. They talked and drank—actually, he drank and Hannah stopped after a couple of glasses of wine—well into the night. He was obviously extremely drunk, which if he’d given a shit, he would have said that it was undignified for his subordinate to see him that way.

  Luckily, he didn’t give a shit. Now, he just had to hope that they hadn’t had sex; that would make the mission very awkward, and promptly smash any hopes he had of any type of relationship with Olivia.

  He stumbled as the dog—what was its name again?—got underfoot as he made his way through the small studio apartment toward the kitchen. “God dammit, Chi-Chi,” Grady grumbled, remembering the Pomeranian’s name.

  Across the room, the area designated as Hannah’s bedroom caught his eye. Her sheets were rumpled and the comforter was thrown back, meaning she’d slept in the bed. The fact that he’d woken on the couch was a good sign.

  Grady stared out the window at the lightening sky while the coffee brewed. Hannah had a great apartment. Both the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument were silhouetted against the rising sun. Absently, he wondered what her rent was for the place. Petworth was nice, but seeing that view when he was home would be nicer.

  “Isn’t that a great view?” Hannah asked from her bedroom area.

  He turned to reply, and saw that she was wrapped in a towel. He quickly turned away, saying, “Sorry.”

  She laughed. “You weren’t so shy last night, old man.”

  “Uh… Sorry. We didn’t?”

  “No. I’m just kidding. You were a perfect gentleman—well, a perfect gentleman who told some pretty dirty jokes that made some of the people around us upset. But otherwise, very gentlemanly.”

  He continued to stare out the window as the sound of clothes rustled behind him. “Okay. I’m decent,” Hannah said.

  Grady glanced at the coffee pot. “It’s just about done.”

  “Oh, thank God,” she groaned. “I was up way too late last night. How do you do it?”

  Finally, he turned to watch her walk over to him. She wore hospital scrub bottoms and a heavy sweatshirt. “I don’t usually get that drunk,” he replied.

  “You needed it,” she said. “What with your ex-fiancé taking your daughter to Texas and the stress of the mission, I get it.”

  Grady grimaced. “I told you about Lucy?”

  “Yeah.”

  The conversation from the night before was blurry in his mind. How had he let himself get so wasted?

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring you down last night.”

  She reached out and swatted his elbow affectionately. “You didn’t bring me down. Hell, I feel like we connected more in those four hours than I did with my crew over the course of two deployments.”

  Grady poured her coffee until she indicated to stop at three-quarters of the way full so she could add cream, then he filled his mug almost to the top.

  “Black?” she asked, gesturing at the cup.

  “Like my soul,” he chuckled.

  “Hey, now,” Hannah said, turning into him and wrapping her arms around his waist.

  Her eyebrows shot upward as her eyes widened in either shock or embarrassment, then she squeezed him tighter than a romantic gesture would have been and released, stepping away from him quickly. “You’re not damaged goods, okay? We all have a lot of baggage.”

  Shit, he grumbled internally.

  “Hannah,” he started.

  “Sorry, Grady. I was just giving you a friendly hug. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I need to know that this isn’t going to be a problem.”

  “What?” she demurred, turning to the refrigerator to retrieve the coffee cream.

  “I’m glad that we were able to have fun socially last night,” Grady said, reaching out tentatively toward her elbow and then deciding against it. His hand fell to the counter. “I need to know that you’re good to go for the mission.”

  “Yes,” she said firmly as she straightened up and closed the refrigerator door. “It was just an innocent hug, man.”

  “Okay,” Grady replied. “If we fuck up this mission, we could start a war. Hell, if we don’t fuck it up, we could still start a war. We have to be in and out without anyone knowing we were there.”

  “When we collect every hard drive and scrap of paper we can find, plus kill any guards at the site and free prisoners, it’ll be kind of obvious that we were there.”

  “You know what I mean,” Grady replied.

  She poured a healthy dose of cream into her cup and stirred the dark liquid with a spoon until it turned a caramel color. “I know what you mean. There won’t be any issues.”

  He nodded and raised his mug. “Here’s to a blossoming friendship then.”

  “Wow. Did you really just toast me with a cup of coffee?”

  He made a show of looking around before saying, “I don’t see any whiskey, so yeah.”

  Small crow’s feet appeared at the corners of her eyes as she smiled and lifted her own coffee. “Okay then. To friendship… And to making half a mil for a couple of weeks’ worth of work.”

  “Now, that’s something I can definitely drink to.”

  The rest of the day was spent down at The Pen loading their gear into heavy, ruggedized cases that would be transported for the operators to Andrews Air Force Base before their flight the next morning. Since Havoc was trying to keep their name from being attached to the mission, anything that the company had purchased that had a serial number was not allowed to leave the building.

  The serial number issue only caused problems in a few areas, so the team was able to take cold weather clothing and tactical gear from the
company’s supply rooms. Pete gifted Grady with two untraceable satellite phones and seven earpiece/throat mike communication devices that looked like they’d been cobbled together in a hobbyist’s garage.

  “Best we could do on short notice,” Pete had said of the commo gear. It turned out that one of Havoc’s communications guys had put them together from parts purchased from different online shops and overnighted to a post office box in West Virginia. The company was being ridiculously cautious.

  Finally, in another last-minute change of plans, Pete informed Grady and his team that they’d be flying commercial to Tokyo instead of on the Air Force plane with their gear. If foreign intelligence services couldn’t find them in the flight manifests and verify that they’d arrived via commercial means, then the US Government would likely be under suspicion.

  The more distance between a US-based company and the mission, the better.

  “Hey, Grady. Got a minute?” Pete asked from the doorway to the supply room where he was busy cramming changes of clothing and gear into a civilian backpack.

  “Yeah. What’s up?”

  “Kizer wants to talk with you.”

  “Oh… Uh, hey, Rob,” Grady called out to the communications expert. “Can you keep an eye on my bag and make sure nobody rat-fucks my shit?”

  “Yeah, man,” Carmike replied.

  Grady walked beside Pete to the stairwell and went down the single flight of stairs to the lobby, where a set of elevators would take them to the corporate offices on the fifth floor. The Havoc Group’s building was odd in that the elevator did not stop on the second floor where the supplies were kept. Everything had to be carried down the stairs and through the lobby. Grady wasn’t sure if that was a quirk of the building or if it had purposely been designed that way so someone couldn’t take cartloads of gear that they didn’t need. Everything an operator needed had to be able to fit on his back.