Drake pointed to a pair of small blue boxes floating on the horizon. “What are those, Lieutenant?”
“Radar tracks.” Lighthart used his trackball to move crosshairs over one of the contacts. All of its data appeared on the screen, including its type—a container ship—and its name and destination. “We use position data and ship size to correlate targets with a real-time database. If she can see a boat, the Dagger can tell you who it is.” He glanced back. “So? What do you boys think of her?”
Nick patted the gray wall. “She’s a real beauty.”
“All except the callsign,” said Drake. “Rawhide? Couldn’t you come up with something a little less landlocked?”
Lighthart returned his eyes to the screen. “Dolphin or Sea Lion would be too obvious.”
“Have you considered Sea Monkey?”
As Nick slapped his teammate’s arm with the back of his hand, his phone chimed. He had come to dread that sound. He fished the device out of a wet pocket, praying the alert meant a text from his dad, knowing, fearing, that it was something else. His fear proved justified.
The black box with the ivory letters waited for him on the screen. TheEmissary has taken your queen. Your move.
An icy hand gripped Nick’s chest. His queen. Katy.
On cue, the phone rang—just like with Scott.
He put the phone to his ear and turned toward the seclusion of the aft bay. “What happened? Is Katy okay?”
“Hey there, Nick Baron.” The voice was CJ’s. She sounded weak. “Don’t know about Katy, but I’m feeling a little peaked, myself. You might not have to buy me an expensive dinner after all.”
Slowly, and with effort, the FBI agent explained what had happened at the pump station. Her team stopped the Hashashin from infecting the water supply, but the terrorist had already injected himself with the virus. He had planned to throw himself into the reservoir. The blood he coughed up infected her instead.
Nick steadied himself against the corridor wall, partly because of the bounce and roll of the Dagger, but mostly because of the flood of neurochemicals assaulting his system. The revelation that the lost queen was not Katy, the guilt of his relief, and the impotence of knowing that Kattan had wounded, perhaps killed, another friend while he had yet to even touch the man all combined and conflicted, weakening him to the edge of collapse.
“CJ, I—”
“Don’t blame yourself, Nick. This is part of the job. Every agent knows it.”
Nick pounded the wall with his fist. “This was not your job. It was a game, Kattan’s stupid chess game. You were the queen, a piece to be taken. Somehow he knew you would be at the pump station.”
“The queen. I like the sound of that.” Her voice was fading. “Nick, I’m tired. I’m going to transfer the line to the doc.”
“CJ, wait—” But the line clicked over.
“Nick? It’s Pat.”
Nick closed his eyes. “How long does she have?”
Dr. Heldner was cold, analytical. “Twenty-four hours. Maybe less. This bug is an accelerated version of the black pox, the hemorrhagic form of smallpox. It will kill her too quickly for us to synthesize a vaccine in time.” She paused. “The infected Hashashin called himself the third and final sign, Nick. The final sign. What if this nuke is a wild goose chase to keep you off Kattan’s trail until he disappears for good?”
“You want me to abandon the search for the nuke. Go after Kattan directly to get the vaccine he’s carrying.”
“It would shorten our timeline from days to hours.”
Nick processed the idea for a moment and then rejected it. “No. Whatever that guy said, the nuke is real. Going after it is our best hope on all fronts. Kattan wants revenge, a very personal revenge against me. He’ll be there in Jerusalem, and he’ll have the vaccine with him.”
“You’d better hope so,” said Heldner. “Because CJ and the pump station weren’t the only targets for this virus.”
CHAPTER 67
Washington, DC
At nine P.M., after much deliberation with his advisers and six minutes after the seven-hundredth case of the black pox was diagnosed, the president of the United States held a press conference to declare a federal state of emergency. Before he finished eloquently delivering what CNN declared a presidency-defining speech of hope and comfort, fifty-two more cases appeared. The spread of the virus was accelerating. The FEMA disaster area encompassed half of the eastern seaboard, from Virginia to Vermont.
Helicopters flew over the capital, their spotlights searching for looters. The National Guard patrolled the streets in Humvees and hazmat gear. On the great green lawn of the Washington Mall stood a glowing white tent that rivaled Barnum and Bailey. The eastern wing housed the CDC’s main conference room.
Dr. Heldner paused in a narrow hallway formed from undulating white laminate. She needed a moment to gather her wits before jumping into the shark tank. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and then pushed through the plastic flap.
A barrage of questions hit her the moment she stepped into the room. A few of the voices sounded angry, all of them sounded scared. As Heldner stepped up to a freestanding smartboard, she held up her hands for silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, please. I’ll answer your questions after I complete my briefing.” She picked up a remote from the smartboard’s tray and pointed it at the screen. Nothing happened. She scowled at a tech standing at the back of the room. “Could we?”
While the kid hunted for the source of the problem, Heldner scanned the worried faces at the long folding table—doctors, generals, politicians. Several wore latex gloves. Two of them, including Senator Cartwright, wore surgical masks over their faces.
She snorted. “This bug isn’t airborne, Senator. You don’t have to wear a mask.”
The senator’s cheeks rose beneath the blue covering, in what Heldner presumed was a smile. “I find this mask very comfortable, Doctor,” he said in his Virginia drawl. “I think I’ll keep it for a while.”
The kid in the back found the problem, and the smartboard lit up, showing Heldner’s first slide. There were gasps all around the room, a reaction to the massive numbers on the screen. She held up her hands again. “Take it easy. This is the might-have-been. I wanted you to see it because I want to stress the lethality of the weapon these terrorists have produced.” She used the laser pointer in the remote to highlight her figures. “Had they succeeded in getting this virus into the DC water supply, a half million people would have died within the first forty-eight hours. And there is little we could have done to save them. Even if we had had a vaccine, we could not have reproduced it fast enough on that scale. Consequently, another one and a half to two million would have died before we got control of the outbreak.”
“We don’t need the might-have-beens, Doctor. We need the here and now,” said Cartwright.
Heldner directed a frown at the politician and then continued. “By stopping the terrorist at the pump station, our tactical response blocked a major portion of the attack. However, they were smart. There was an additional means of distribution for the virus.”
The doctor flipped to a new slide, a map of Washington, DC. Dozens of red dots populated the screen, showing diagnosed cases. The spidery branches were clearly centered on Union Station, twelve hundred meters from the very tent they were meeting in. One branch leading away from the station was thicker than the others. Heldner pressed her remote and a map of the DC Metro system overlaid the first. The heavier branch of smallpox cases coincided with the Metro line running from Union Station up to a stop near Salem Park.
“He used the rail system, and that wasn’t just for lack of a car. Look.” Heldner expanded the map until it showed the upper East Coast. There were now hundreds of tiny red dots, and their branches centered on the train stations along the line from Albany to New York City to Washington, DC.
“We found
a spent vial on the train the terrorist took from New York City to Union Station. CDC doctors are using the remains to synthesize a cure, but that cure is seventy-two hours away, at best. It may be ninety-six, and every hour we lose has an exponential consequence.” Heldner pressed her remote again, and the red dots grew outward at an exponential rate until the spidery arms stretched as far south as the Carolinas and as far west as the Mississippi.
“Is that your worst case, Doctor?” asked Cartwright.
Heldner shook her head. “This is our best case. Even if we have a working vaccine in three days, reproduction and dissemination will still be a nightmare. Many won’t respond to treatment. There will be riots that slow us down. Within a week, twelve thousand Americans will die. Within two weeks, twenty thousand.”
CHAPTER 68
In the narrow crew locker between the Dagger’s aft bay and its cockpit, Nick and Drake found the equipment Walker had ordered for them. Two green waterproof duffels lay on the floor in front of a long bench. There was also a rubber submersible crate, four feet square and three feet tall, propped against the bulkhead behind it. Molly came up on SATCOM to brief them.
“We sent you FN-303 nonlethal dispensers,” said the analyst as each man pulled a black polymer rifle out of his duffel.
Nick checked the seal on the air canister fixed to the side of the weapon and then eyed the large red rounds in the drum magazine. “What kind of grenades are these?”
“Eighteen-millimeter nanosecond electric pulse.”
“You’re kidding.” He pulled out one of the rounds to examine it. NEP grenades were far superior to conventional Tasers and stun grenades, but they weren’t supposed to be fielded yet. “I thought these were developmental only.”
“So did I,” said Molly. “But when Lighthart heard you were going to Israel, he offered them up. Those are a gift from his unit.”
“Ouch,” said Drake, clutching his chest like he’d been wounded.
Nick glanced at his teammate and nodded his agreement. Apparently Lighthart had access to ops technology that the Triple Seven Chase didn’t. He was jealous.
The bags also contained a change of clothes, modified Sig Sauer P290 micro-compact pistols with suppressors, and various other mission necessities. Molly struggled through the rest of the list; it was clear she was reading off her computer, unfamiliar with the actual gear.
“Scott usually handles equipment checks,” said Nick, sensing her discomfort. “Why the switch? I thought he was back with us.”
Silence on the line. Then, “Scott’s resting. That’s all.”
Nick touched his earpiece and switched to an isolated line. “Don’t lie to me, Molly.”
More silence.
“Molly . . .”
“He’s paralyzed, Nick.” After holding it in so long, she just blurted out the revelation. “Doc Heldner says he’ll never walk again.”
Nick could not respond. He had suspected something like this, but now that he knew it to be true, he could not speak. Quinn was down, Rami was dead and CJ close to it, and now Scott’s life was changed forever, not to mention the dozens who died at Paternoster Square and the thousands who would die in America and Israel if he did not find Kattan. All this collateral damage from a single five-hundred-pound bomb that he called down on a tiny mud house nine years ago. How much more could he take? How much more could the world take? He gazed over at his teammate for several seconds.
Drake looked up from his inventory. “What?”
Chief Morales knocked on the wall next to the open portal. “Gentlemen, the L-T wants you up front. We’re approaching the coast.”
—
From three miles out, little could be seen of the shoreline besides the lights of Tel Aviv, blazing on the northern edge of the infrared display. The two blue boxes Drake identified when they left Cyprus had multiplied into several, marking a variety of civilian ships near the coast. By two miles, the small stretch of beach that was Nick’s target materialized in dull gray, dark and empty. On either side of it, green diamonds and red octagons appeared one by one, and kept appearing until there was a long line of them fixed to the shore, rising and falling with the motion of the Dagger. Each shape had a small stack of data next to it, identifying it as a piece of the extensive Israeli shore defense network—radars and optical trackers and the like. Stealth boat or not, this was not going to be easy.
Several minutes later, just inside one mile from the shore, Lighthart slowed the Dagger to a drift. Morales abruptly stood and offered his hand to his two guests. “Good luck, gentlemen, whatever your mission may be.” The chief’s phrasing sounded oddly final.
Drake stared at the distant shoreline as he cautiously shook the chief’s hand. “Am I missing something?”
“Didn’t you see the dry suits and rebreathers hanging in the locker?”
“SEAL boat,” said Drake, gesturing all around. “We figured they were just part of the decor.”
Lighthart glanced over his shoulder. “Do you see this display?” Then he turned back to the screen and pointed to the shapes on either side of the target beach, reading off each label in turn. “Surface radar, surface radar, passive sonar. This one is an infrared motion detector designed to break out anything that isn’t a fish or a wave. The Dagger is invisible to radar but not to infrared.” Even as he spoke, a new red box entered the display from the right. The SEAL lieutenant captured the box with his crosshairs and expanded it, zooming in on a long patrol boat cutting across the waves. “And then we have these guys.”
“And they are?” asked Nick, leaning in to get a closer look at the Israeli boat. He could see turret-mounted weapons fore and aft.
“You’re looking at a Super Dvora Mark Three interceptor,” said Morales, as if reciting it from a manual. “There are several guarding the Israeli coast, and every boat is packing an optically guided twenty-five-millimeter cannon and the naval variant of Hellfire missiles.”
Lighthart looked back at Nick and raised his eyebrows. “I don’t care who called in this favor. I’m not taking my boat any closer to that briar patch than I have to.” Then his eyes returned to his control panel. “Nice working with you. Now suit up. You’re going for a swim.”
—
“That was rude.” Drake’s voice sounded muted and tinny through the comm link in their full-face dive masks. “Don’t you think that was rude?”
The two of them kicked toward the shore at a steady pace, dragging their waterproof bags and pushing the big submersible crate ahead of them. Thanks to the infrared motion detectors and the patrol boats, Nick had to set the crate’s buoyancy for five meters below the surface, making it all the harder to push through the water. The SEALs had warned them not to break the surface outside a hundred meters from the beach.
“Lighthart did what he had to. Now pipe down. We don’t know how good their passive sonar is.”
Halfway to the beach, Nick heard an undulating hum in his ear. At first he thought it was the comm link, then he realized that it was engine noise. He checked to his right and left, but he didn’t see the lights or the disturbance of a Dvora on the surface.
“You hear that?” asked Drake.
They brought the crate to a stop and hovered in the water, listening as the hum grew louder until it became a throbbing metallic pound. Suddenly a twenty-foot-tall leviathan materialized out of the murk to their left. “Move!” Nick yelled into his mask.
Nick and Drake pushed together, kicking with everything they had to get the crate out of the submarine’s way. It passed so close behind them that Drake’s fin smacked the dive plane. Even then, they didn’t slow down. Neither of them had any desire to get tumbled by the black beast’s monstrous prop wash.
Despite the slap from Drake’s fin, the sub continued south on its patrol. As far as Nick could tell, the two swimmers and their rubber crate had been dismissed as a biological by its sonar
filters.
They surfaced fifty meters out from the beach and removed their dive masks. Dawn was still more than an hour away, but a quick scan with a night-vision monocle told Nick the three-mile stretch of sand wasn’t as empty as he hoped. “Two-man foot patrol,” he whispered. “Eleven o’clock.”
Drake nodded, silently lifting his FN-303 out of the water. He paused to dip the fat barrel and let the seawater spill out, and then raised the holographic sight to his eye and fired a single NEP grenade with a resounding foomp. The two Israelis stopped and looked out across the water, searching for the source of the sound. They never saw it.
Activated by a proximity sensor, the grenade opened a few meters from the foot patrol and released a net of ten barbs, all connected to its power source by micro-thin wires.
Nick heard two surprised yelps from the beach and watched the Israelis drop like stones. The high-voltage pulse instantly knocked them out. Conventional Tasers were painful, exposing targets to long duration shock and only immobilizing them for a few seconds. The NEP grenade pulses lasted a billionth of a second, but they carried much higher voltage. The effect was significantly less damage and significantly higher downtime.
“How long will it last?” whispered Drake.
Nick stared at his teammate for a moment and then turned to look at the Israelis lying on the beach. “I have no idea.”
The final stretch took them less than a minute; they were kicking hard and pushing the crate along the surface through the waves. Nick kept raising his head to make sure the patrol was still down. When they reached the shore, he ran over to the unconscious Israelis and carefully dosed each one with a sedative.
“We should take their uniforms,” grunted Drake, dragging the crate onto the beach. “They might come in handy down the road.”
Nick surveyed his victims. “That’ll work for me, but I don’t think you can squeeze into the other one’s pants.”
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