by Julie Rowe
“Isn’t that sort of combination experimental?” Ava asked.
Henry shrugged. “Nothing else has worked.”
Dr. Rodrigues sighed. “I foresee a long and loud conversation with the FDA. Perhaps I can convince them to allow it, due to the speed and lethality of the disease and its ease of transmission.”
“Is this beta-lactamase inhibitor a new antibiotic?” River asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“No, it helps the antibiotic get through the bacteria’s cell wall. It’s how the little buggers keep out the antibiotics they used to be susceptible to.”
“The terrorists tore off my respirator. I think they were all sick with the Neisseria. It’s likely that I’m infected.” Ava glanced at River. “It’s possible you are, too.”
“I’m calling the FDA now.” Rodrigues turned to Henry. “Do you know what amount of beta-lactamase inhibitor we need to treat this outbreak?”
“A fuck ton.”
“I need numbers, Henry. Figure it out. The FDA isn’t going to accept boatload as an amount.” She stopped before she could make it out the door and glared at Ava and River. “You two, stay here until there’s an update. I’ll have food sent for you.”
Most of the staff left, though some updated the infected and deceased numbers on the wall. All the totals went up.
Ava lay back on the gurney set against the wall. “I think I could sleep for a week.”
“Rest is good. Sleep, not so much.”
It looked like she had to really work to open her eyes. “Why not sleep?”
“Because we’re not out of hot water yet.”
He didn’t say anything more, and she didn’t ask, but she did stay awake as people came and went. Dr. Rodrigues had turned it into a mini-communications center, so foot traffic was high.
While they waited, a nurse came and hooked Ava up to an IV.
About ten minutes later, Dozer strode into the room. “Okay, Palmer just got the sheriff onboard with us using the city lockup to house and interrogate our four young terrorists.” He looked at River. “You want in on this?”
“You have to ask?”
“River?”
He could hear the worry in Ava’s voice. “I’ll be careful.”
“How are you feeling? Any symptoms?” she asked.
“Nope. No headache or fever.”
But the frown was still on her face. “Listen,” he said, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “I’ll be surrounded by law enforcement, in a police building. I’ll be fine.”
One corner of her mouth tilted upward. “No more explosions.” It was an order.
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a salute. “Work on getting better.”
“I will.”
He looked at Dozer. “Who’s coming with us?”
“A couple of my agents from Homeland, Palmer, two people from the FBI, and an investigator from the military police.”
“Let’s get to it.”
Dozer had a vehicle waiting with the other two Homeland agents. Even though it was a large SUV, the vehicle felt small. The FBI agents went with Palmer, who was leading the way. He’d joked that he should get a raise for having to babysit them all.
River agreed.
“Us, Homeland and FBI agents, a cop and an MP is a lot of testosterone in one room,” River said. “We’ll be lucky if our squealing terrorist doesn’t piss his pants.”
Dozer grunted. “We’re going to be very polite, aren’t we guys?”
The other two agents replied, “Yes, sir.” In unison.
“What did you do to these guys, Dozer, feed them some of your special Kool-Aid?”
Chisholm glanced at River briefly. “Not funny, Sergeant.”
“Sure it is. It has to be, or this kind of shit will kill you from the inside out. Humor is one of the best coping strategies for dealing with stress that there is.”
They all looked at him.
“Seriously, it’s right up there with playing with kittens and puppies.”
“Is he always like this?” Korsman, a Homeland Security agent who’d been with Toland, asked.
“Like what?” Dozer asked.
“Irritating.”
“Unfortunately, yes, but he’s also right. Every soldier I’ve ever met, serving or veteran, has a dark sense of humor. It’s practically trained into them.”
Palmer’s vehicle entered a parking garage, calling out the door code to Dozer so he could get their vehicle in as well. They parked next to the officer and gathered outside the two vehicles for a quick huddle.
Palmer used a key card to open the staff entrance to the building, then gave them a quick tour, ending up in the holding area or county jail.
“We’re wasting time,” FBI Agent 1 said. “Who’s staying here, and who’s going to get those damned terrorists?”
“I don’t understand why some of us didn’t pick them up before we all arrived here? That would have saved a lot of time,” FBI Agent 2 said.
“Calm down,” River said. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Everyone stared at him for a moment.
“What the fuck is going on, Sergeant?” FBI Agent 1 asked, sounding royally pissed off. “You jerking us around?”
“I thought you were in a hurry,” River replied. “Rodrigues managed to find us some secure transport.” He held up his personal cell phone. “I just found out. They’ll be here in about five minutes, so you should be happy, not trying to rip me a new one.”
“Five minutes doesn’t give us much time to get ready,” Korsman said.
“We’re questioning kids who probably aren’t old enough to drink yet,” River pointed out. “I’m not thinking we need much prep time.”
Chapter Thirty-One
3:10 p.m.
Something cold slithered down Ava’s arm toward her shoulder. She opened her eyes…when had she closed them?
Who put the IV in her arm? As her gaze followed the tubing up to a bag of saline solution and two much smaller bags, someone said, “Go back to sleep.”
“Henry,” Ava frowned and lifted her chilly arm. “What…?”
“Ampicillin.” He touched one of the small IV bags. “Beta-lactamase inhibitor.” He pointed at the other small bag.
She looked at her watch. “I only slept for thirty minutes. Dr. Rodrigues must have scared the crap out of the FDA to get permission to use an inhibitor so fast.”
He grunted, but didn’t look at her as he fiddled with the IV bags and made notes in the small notebook he always kept in his pocket. He closed the notebook, tucked it away, then turned and headed for the door, all without making eye contact. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Henry?”
He stopped, but didn’t turn around. “What?”
“Dr. Rodrigues did get permission, right?”
He stood motionless for exactly two seconds, then left the room without answering.
Which was another kind of answer.
His departure must have been a signal to those who’d been waiting outside, because several people came inside to update the whiteboard with new numbers for both the sick and dead.
Talking on a cell phone, Dr. Rodrigues entered to sort through some of the papers on the table. She glanced at Ava, then mouthed, “FDA.”
Oh no. Dr. Rodrigues didn’t even know about the inhibitor being transfused into her. Was this the favor River had asked of Henry?
Idiots.
She had to fight the urge to cry, scream, and pummel someone. But, if she kicked up a fuss, others might notice there were more IV bags hanging above her head than there should have been.
Her boss ended her call and smiled at Ava. “The FDA is willing to consider the extreme situation. We should have an answer in a couple of hours.” Dr. Rodrigues’s cell phone rang again. “I have to take this,” she said as she turned away.
Searing hot anger cleared away any lingering drowsiness. Ava was going to strangle River when she saw him. Well, maybe not actually strangle
. Perhaps yell at him for a bit and step on his feet a couple of times. Her hands shook with the need to do something, anything, that might take the edge off her anger, fear, and frustration with a man who, despite being brilliant and more than a little dangerous, didn’t know how to listen.
Why wait?
She dug around in her belted tool kit for her cell phone and texted River. You are an idiot, and Henry is an idiot for listening to you.
His response only took a few seconds. I’d rather be an idiot than see you dead.
Her thumbs flew across her screen. Henry could lose his job. His career.
No, he won’t. Exigent circumstances.
If she wasn’t careful, she was going to crack her phone’s screen with one of her thumbs. You ass. This isn’t some remote battlefield in another country. This is the USA. You don’t get to interpret the rules any way you want. We have LAWS!
His reply came much faster than she expected. What he said made her insides go cold. We’re in a state of emergency. The rules have changed.
The rules have changed. Those four words tumbled around in her head.
Was he right? Had the rules changed?
How had the rules changed?
“What special powers does a state of emergency give decision makers?” she asked out loud.
The FEMA director answered her. “The right to commandeer personal property, if deemed necessary. The right to detain people, if deemed a danger without charges for a limited amount of time. The right to call in additional help in the form of the National Guard, military, medical, or other entities that are deemed useful.”
“So, essentially, in a state of emergency, help is called in, and all of that can be done quickly without all the bureaucratic nonsense?”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “That’s about right.”
She felt no joy in his confirmation of her understanding. Terror was a better word to describe the emotion that constricted her airway.
She tapped the screen on her phone, and wondered if she’d missed something.
They’d missed something.
The terrorist attacks had started with an outbreak and evolved into suicide bombings and planned explosions in several high-value targets.
But, their last bomb only succeeded in blowing up their own people. They didn’t stream it live, nor did they make any last demands, making it meaningless.
It didn’t make sense.
Unless, something had changed. She’d been in the chemistry lab with the last of the terrorists. River and Mr. Sturgis had harassed and captured four of the students and wounded Sam, who’d told her…too much?
What had he said?
She was going to be famous. Blah, blah, blah. They knew what the government and every law-enforcement agency in the country was doing. Blah, blah, blah. They were going to change the world. Blah, blah, blah.
He’d named all those law-enforcement agencies. Even the CDC.
River believed there was someone inside the investigation who was the real cell leader. If that person blew up his own people so they couldn’t talk, what wouldn’t he do to stop River and the team of men with him from questioning the surviving terrorists?
Nothing.
Who was this person?
Someone close enough to the investigation to have reasonably up-to-date information, but not stand out. It wouldn’t be any of the Homeland agents, who were obvious in their distaste in accepting her orders. That left the FBI, police, CDC, and military.
Not the CDC. If someone from the CDC was the leader, they’d have chosen something much worse than Neisseria. The military hadn’t gotten involved until after the bombing at their front gate, and the FBI agents had been working in tandem with Homeland—she never saw one without the other. That left the El Paso police. Their officers had been everywhere, involved in every level of the emergency, because this was their city and they knew it best.
Who was it?
Someone who’d been everywhere that damned ringtone had gone off. Starting with the coffee shop.
Her hands shook as she opened the camera app on her phone and looked through the pictures she’d taken of the crowd a couple minutes before the explosion. She’d been focused on the agitated member of the crowd who’d been particularly persistent in harassing River, but she hadn’t looked at the police officers.
All she could see were their backs as they guarded the police line, until she got to the first picture she’d taken. In that photo, one of the officers had turned his head and was looking at River with an angry glare.
Officer Palmer.
No, he couldn’t be…but he’d been with them at the campus dorm, at the microbiology lab, and he’d have been in a position to overhear Dozer or Dr. Rodrigues talking about River storming the chemistry lab.
Had anyone else been present at, or had knowledge of, all the bombing locations?
She flipped through the photos again, studying them to find another possibility, but none emerged. Her breathing became labored and choppy as an invisible band tightened around her lungs. Palmer was with River, Dozer, and their team now. They were in a building he knew as well as his own home. A building with any number of firearms, explosives, and other weapons inside it.
He wasn’t going to let those four boys tell anyone anything.
He wasn’t going to allow anyone to leave that building alive.
The room dimmed and her vision narrowed, until all she could see was Palmer’s face on the screen of her phone. A buzzing ring got louder and louder in her ears.
No, there wasn’t any time to pass out. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing, opening up her chest to take in more air.
She could be wrong, but what if she was right?
Ava texted River, a simple one-word message: Palmer. She attached the picture and hit send.
If she was right, River was in more danger now than ever. The building they were in was Palmer’s second home.
River needed help, and it had to be the kind of help that wouldn’t alert Palmer.
A few seconds later, she opened her eyes and said to the person closest to her, the FEMA director, “Can you get Dr. Rodrigues for me? I just remembered something important.”
He looked at her, glanced at her hands clutching her cell phone so tight her knuckles were white, then studied her face. Whatever he saw there made him nod. “Will do.”
He moved across the room to tap her boss on the shoulder. In the middle of a phone conversation, she tried to wave him away, but he pointed at Ava and said something into her boss’s ear.
Dr. Rodrigues strode across the room, ending her call. She crouched next to Ava’s cot. “What is it?”
“I think I know who the cell leader is.” Before Dr. Rodrigues or the FEMA director could comment, she continued quickly with, “It has to be someone with access to information, someone aware of what River and I were doing. Someone able to remote detonate or start a remote detonator on all of the explosives within the correct time frames.” She turned the phone around to show them the photo. “He’s the only one who checks off all the boxes.”
Ava watched Dr. Rodrigues’s face pale. “If he’s the cell leader, I don’t think he’s going to want anyone to survive it.”
“Suicide vest?” Ava asked. “Roger Squires wore one.”
“Very likely.”
“How do we stop him?” Ava asked.
“We don’t,” her boss said. “We can’t.”
The FEMA director let out a short bark of a laugh. “That’s why Sgt. River wanted to interrogate them in a different, controlled location. So, he could draw out the leader, but does he know who that is? Or will this guy”—he gestured at the phone—“blow himself and all of them up anyway?”
Oh, that was helpful.
Ava took hold of her frayed temper and managed to ask again in an even tone, “How do we stop him?”
Dr. Rodrigues gave her a tired, despondent look. “We have to warn River and Dozer, but Palmer has an ECC. What we say to th
em, Palmer is going to hear.”
“I texted River, so he knows, but if all their personal phones start going off, Palmer is going to figure out that something is up.”
Think, think.
“Mr. Sturgis,” Ava said. “Palmer doesn’t know anything about him. He’s a retired drill sergeant. He helped River get me away from the student terrorists.”
A deep furrow etched its way between the FEMA director’s eyes. “You both failed to mention that.”
If he was looking for an apology, he was going to be disappointed. “We didn’t know the identity of the cell leader, so we left Mr. Sturgis out of our report.”
“Dozer told me about him,” Dr. Rodrigues said. “But I wasn’t clear on how much help he was going to be.”
“His voice should be a registered weapon,” Ava said drily. “In just a few minutes, he wound up those college students so tight, they lost control of themselves and the situation.”
Rodrigues looked at the FEMA director.
“Do it,” he said.
Dr. Rodrigues nodded her agreement.
Ava typed a quick message to the retired drill sergeant. The head bad guy is El Paso police officer Palmer. He’s one of the men with River. River knows, but Palmer will be watching him. Can you pull off “feeble old man” long enough to grab him or something?
Mr. Sturgis’s reply was as cryptic as River’s had been. Or something.
For a moment, her stomach went weightless, and nausea threatened to hijack her body. There were so many ways this could go wrong.
She sucked in a breath through her mouth, staving off the urge to vomit. “Done.” She looked up at her boss and the FEMA director. “Now what?”
“We get back to work and pray the good guys are successful,” the FEMA director said.
What about her? “But—”
“Ava.” Dr. Rodrigues cut her off with a smile Ava recognized as the one she wore when explaining things to civilians. “You’ve done all you can. Your job now is to rest and wait for a reply.” She smiled and patted Ava on the shoulder. “I think you’ve been blown up enough today, don’t you?”
Ava wanted to argue, to insist that she be involved in the rescue of River and their people from a deranged maniac, but she also recognized the expression on her boss’s face.