by Rick Acker
“We’ll all die if we stay here!” replied Ben. “I’m going to at least try to get this seat off his legs!” So far, they had left the seat in place for fear of injuring Will further if they moved it. And they couldn’t get in a position to lift it without leaving the cover of the wrecked vehicle. But as Will’s condition deteriorated and the fire moved closer, doing nothing became a worse and worse option.
Elena sat in undecided silence, but Noelle said, “Okay, we’ll cover you.”
Ben said a quick prayer, got out of his seat, and scrambled over the car. Elena and Noelle fired short bursts into spots where Chechen snipers might be hiding. He pushed aside a file cabinet and pulled on the driver’s-side door. It didn’t budge, but the handle snapped off in his hand.
Ben looked around on the floor and spotted a length of pipe that appeared to have fallen from the ceiling. Jamming one end of it into a gap between the edge of the door and the bent car frame, he braced himself against a row of cubicles and pushed the pipe with all his might, painfully aware that his entire body was now exposed to the dark windows beyond the fire. His muscles strained and shook with the effort, and his back prickled with the fear that at any moment bullets could tear through him. But none came—and after several minutes of exhausting labor, the door suddenly popped open, sending Ben sprawling to the floor.
Panting, he got to his knees and crawled to where he could poke his head in between the doorframe and the seat. The thick stench of blood nearly gagged him as he leaned in to examine the situation. The floor of the car had buckled under the force of the crash, ramming the seat back and down over Will’s legs. The crash also had partly torn the seat free from the floorboard. Only two bolts now held it down, and one of them was partially sheared through.
He struggled to unscrew the undamaged bolt, but the combination of his sweat and Will’s blood made it too slick. He pulled his shirtsleeve over his hand for a better grip, but still the bolt would not move.
He turned back and fished around on the ground for the pipe he had used to pry open the door. It was now bent, but he was still able to wedge it under the frame of the seat nearest to the damaged bolt and work it back and forth to weaken the torn metal. He could feel the heat on his back increasing, but he resisted the temptation to turn around and look at the progress of the fire.
Snap!
The top of the bolt broke off. Ben tipped the seat off of Will’s legs, forcing and bending the seat over the remaining bolt so that the seatback leaned against the steering wheel. Will moaned, and the flow of blood from his crushed legs increased. As Elena watched for snipers outside, Noelle and Ben quickly repositioned and tightened the tourniquets. They could reach more effective locations now that the seat was gone, and the bleeding stopped almost completely.
“Whew!” Ben wiped the sweat from his eyes and sat back on his heels. “All right, now I say we—”
He had been going to say “get out of here,” but as he looked around, he saw that that was no longer possible. The fire had spread along the walls of the room, which were lined with paper-filled wooden file cabinets that burned like torches. Roaring flames now barred all exits, trapping the little group in a breathlessly hot and shrinking patch of floor.
“Two more coming,” Sergei warned the police captain as he watched the two vans depart from the brewery.
“My men aren’t there yet,” replied the captain. “If you think you can stop them, do it.”
“I’ll try.” Sergei ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. He took out his Beretta and readied himself. If he could take out the drivers of the vans, they would probably crash. At the very least, they’d be disabled long enough for the police to reestablish the roadblock.
As the first van approached, Sergei jumped up from his hiding place and aimed through the windshield. But before he could fire, a burst of rifle fire erupted from the trailing van. Bullets struck Sergei in the stomach, chest, and left arm, hurling him to the ground.
He lay writhing in pain by the roadside as the vans barreled past. His Kevlar vest had stopped the bullets that hit his torso, though they still had the impact of body blows delivered by a heavyweight boxer. The third shot had snapped the radius of his left arm.
Hauling himself to his knees with every ounce of grit and determination he could muster, Sergei watched helplessly as the vans raced toward the devastated roadblock.
“Those things are armed like tanks,” he muttered to himself as he noticed what looked like grenade launchers and automatic rifles in the hands of the men crouched in the side and back doorways of the vehicles.
Tanks! He suddenly remembered one of his great-uncle Peter’s stories from World War II. In the depths of winter, the ground had frozen so hard that Russian infantrymen had been able to take out Nazi Panzer and Tiger tanks by firing their rifles into the ground in front of the tanks. The bullets would bounce off the frozen earth and strike the vulnerable gas tanks from below, creating a spectacular and lethal fireball.
Sergei fired rapidly, aiming a few yards behind the rear van. One ricocheting bullet brought sparks from the bumper, so he moved his aim and put the bullets almost directly underneath the van. But he was just guessing where to shoot; he was firing too quickly to aim well, and the angle the bullets took depended largely on pebbles and small imperfections in the surface of the road.
His tenth shot struck the pavement under the rear axle of the second van. If the asphalt had been perfectly flat, the bullet would have bounced up into the engine, probably causing an oil fire. But the asphalt was not flat. It had a small pothole caused by years of heavy truck traffic. The bullet ricocheted off the lip of the pothole at a much shallower angle than it would have off a flat surface and missed the rear van entirely. It struck the lead van instead, passing through the gas tank before lodging in the frame.
Sergei watched in amazed joy as the lead van burst into flame and swerved. The rear van smashed into it and caught fire as well.
He staggered to his feet, hardly feeling the wound in his arm or the deep bruises in his chest and stomach.
“Yes!” he shouted as the fire reached explosives in the vans and a string of large and small explosions rocked the night. “Yes!” He pointed to the burning wrecks. “Never start a fight with a Russian, ’cause he’s the one who’ll finish it!”
WHUMP!
A tremendous blast behind Sergei knocked him from his feet again. Debris rained on him, and he turned to see the brewery vanish in a cloud of fire and dust. The old brick warehouse next door swayed in the shock wave, then collapsed, crushing the western side of the electronics factory—very near where the wreck of his Mustang sat.
The hot wind from the blast swept over Elbek where he lay in the ditch beside the access road. The shock wave rolled him over and brought him back to consciousness. His skull throbbed, and blood matted the hair above his left ear. As he reached to touch the wound, he realized that he must have struck his head on the hard, gravelly ground when he was thrown from the exploding van.
He tried to stand, but pain shot through his right leg and he fell. Ignoring the electric jolts of agony, he pulled up his pant leg. He felt his leg with the rough, expert hands of a veteran soldier—one who knows pain and has learned much practical medicine in the field. He found no broken bones. Based on the pain and swelling, he guessed that it was a severe sprain. He could force himself to walk with that, but not fast.
He scrambled up the side of the ditch and into the cover of the long grass. He then crawled parallel to the road for about twenty yards, which he judged was far enough from the crash site to avoid being found by police searching for bodies and evidence thrown off by the collision and explosions. He lay flat and looked around, assessing the situation. He heard shouts and glimpsed running figures. A group stopped by the still-burning vans but looked at them only cursorily and left a lone guard before running on. They were probably hunting fugitives or going t
o find the group trapped in the factory—or whatever was left of them.
Elbek thought furiously. If he could get just one container out of the wreckage of the vans and escape, it would be enough. He could start over, maybe in Chechnya or the lawless mountains of Afghanistan. Or he could go to O’Hare and walk past the check-in counters in the domestic terminals, dispersing an army of unwitting plague-bearers throughout America.
But how could he get to the vans? Even with his bad leg, he could probably eliminate the guard quietly, but then what? The area was swarming with every free police unit from Elmhurst and the surrounding towns, and all of them would be looking for Chechens.
“Looking for Chechens,” he murmured to himself. The germ of an idea took root and began to grow. He smiled. Then he started back toward the ruined Caravans, silent and deadly as a panther.
“Lord, please don’t let us die in here, not like this,” whispered Ben as he looked around. The flames crowded toward them, marching mercilessly down the rows of cubicles. Everyone now choked on the hot fumes from the burning acrylic carpet and plastic office furniture. Their eyes streamed.
The fire alarm suddenly fell silent as the flames melted the wiring, causing a short, but Elena still had to shout to be heard over the roar and crackle of the flames. “We need to stay low! We can breathe down there!”
There was no longer any question about moving Will. They pulled him out of the car, and all four of them lay flat on the thin gray office carpet. The air wasn’t quite as hot down there, and they could breathe without gagging on chemical smoke. But they were still no closer to escaping.
“Now what do we do?” asked Noelle.
A huge explosion drowned out Elena’s reply and shook the whole building. A split second later, a scorching wind roared through the broken windows, shrieking over their heads as they lay in the shelter of the wrecked car.
A few seconds after, they heard a deep groan followed by a sound like an avalanche. A six-foot-wide piece of masonry smashed through the burning ceiling and landed a few yards in front of them, followed by a hail of bricks and concrete chunks. Then the wall in front of them vanished beneath the collapsing warehouse. A cloud of dust and debris swept over them like a gray wave, leaving them coughing and blinded.
A chill breeze now blew through. It partially cleared the air, and they could see the devastation around them. Wide mounds of rubble lay where the edge of the building had once stood. Pockets of flame flickered here and there in the ruins, but the falling warehouse had mostly snuffed out the inferno in front of them—though the fire continued to rage behind them. Girders and wires hung down from the torn ceiling. Beyond that, they saw a field of ruins where the brewery and warehouse had once stood. It looked very much like old film clips Ben had seen of bombed-out London streets during the Battle of Britain.
They could hear voices shouting outside—and thankfully they were shouting in English.
“Over here!” Ben yelled. He climbed onto the heap of broken brick and waved his arms. “Hey! We’ve got an injured man in here!”
Thirty seconds later, two police officers from nearby Lombard appeared out of the darkness. Within five minutes paramedics were treating Will as he lay on a stretcher in the parking lot outside the factory.
Elena talked to one of the police officers while Ben and Noelle stood together watching the shattered factory burn. Noelle shivered, and Ben put his arm around her. “Do you want me to see if I can track down a jacket or something?” he asked.
“That’s okay,” she replied. “For once, I don’t mind feeling cold.”
“So when do the biohazard guys get here?” Sergei asked the EMT who was bandaging and splinting his left arm.
He reloaded his gun one-handed while they talked. He wasn’t expecting more action, but he had long ago developed the habit of always keeping his firearm loaded when it was in its holster—whether he planned to use it or not.
“They’re over there.” She pointed to the lot across from the roadblock. A group of figures in blue “space suits” gathered around the captured minivans and SUVs, which were surrounded by a wide cordon marked with black-and-yellow police tape. “I heard those are packed with biological weapons. Is that true?”
“Yeah, and so are those two there.” He gestured to the two burned-out wrecks in the middle of the access road. “Someone ought to put a police line around them. There’s some really nasty stuff in them.”
“I’ll call my supervisor and let her know.”
“Thanks.” Sergei thought he saw something move in one of the vans and craned his neck for a better view. Given the number of different units at the scene and the general chaos, it was very possible that not everyone there knew the danger involved. What if a take-charge police detective started searching the vans, found a container full of suspicious-looking powder, and decided to open it?
A pair of headlights momentarily silhouetted the vans, clearly showing a figure inside one of them. Sergei pulled away from the EMT and ran toward the scorched hulks. “Hold it!” he yelled as he ran. “Hey buddy! Get out of there—that’s a biohazard area!”
He arrived just as the figure carefully backed out of the wreckage. As Sergei had suspected, it was an overly independent cop, probably from the Elmhurst department, judging by the uniform, though Sergei couldn’t be sure in the gloom.
“Just checking for unexploded ordnance,” the man said, his voice nearly drowned out by an approaching helicopter. He had a slight accent and his voice was vaguely familiar. Sergei couldn’t quite place him, but thought nothing of it. He knew lots of police officers, and he had met a lot more tonight.
“Okay, just—” Sergei began. But as he spoke, a helicopter’s searchlight swept over them. They recognized each other in the same instant. A split second later, their guns blazed simultaneously and they both fell to the pavement.
The gunshots brought officers running, and the searchlight came back to them. In the harsh white light, Sergei could see Elbek Shishani grabbing for his fallen weapon with one hand while he clutched his chest with the other. No blood welled through his fingers, so Sergei knew he also wore body armor.
Pain burned through Sergei’s chest where Elbek’s bullet had struck, but he brought his gun up and fired into the Chechen’s right arm just as he picked up his gun. Elbek dropped the gun and gave a stifled cry. He glared at Sergei with rage-filled eyes and gathered himself to charge. Sergei shot him in the leg and he collapsed again.
Sergei got to his knees as a group of officers arrived. One kicked Elbek’s gun away as the others trained their weapons on him.
“It’s over,” Sergei said as more officers ran up. “It’s all over.”
“No.” Elbek pulled himself up onto his one good leg. His hand held a small bottle. With a quick movement, he hurled it to the street at Sergei’s feet. It shattered—and a cloud of extremely fine dust suddenly swirled through the little crowd. “Now it’s over!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
A RITE FOR THE DEAD
Elbek lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He silently recited Koran verses as he waited to die. His nose itched, but he could not scratch it because his arms were tied down with the soft, unyielding restraints used on psychotic patients. If he turned his head, he could catch a glimpse of soldiers standing guard outside the double sets of locked, airtight doors. His room, of course, had no windows to the outside.
He had considered trying to escape, but decided not to bother. Allah would take him soon enough no matter where he was.
The figure in the blue biohazard suit leaned forward and tried again. “Do you really want to die of this Ebola-smallpox hybrid?” The voice was muffled and tinny as it came through the suit’s respirator.
Elbek ignored the question and went on reciting scripture.
“Do you know what it will be like?”
Silence.
“First you will develop a fever
. Then blisters will form all over your body, literally tearing the top layer of your skin off. The blisters will be on both the outside and the inside, even in your stomach. The Ebola virus will go to work, eating away your tissues and causing massive bleeding. The blisters will fill with blood and begin to bleed. Then you will start to bleed internally and from your orifices. Even your eyes will bleed. Every moment will be agony, and it will take you days to die.”
None of this was news to Elbek. He continued to lie in calm silence. He knew they were lying when they implied they could save him if only he talked. Dr. Umarov had been quite certain that this disease could not be cured. If he told them everything he knew, they might be able to prolong his life and ease his passage to Paradise, but that was all. Besides, Elbek could bear a few days of agony much more easily than a lifetime in an American prison.
“All of your men are dead or in custody. Your weapons lab is destroyed, and all of your bioweapons are accounted for. The only thing you accomplish by not talking to us is to make it impossible for us to treat you.”
Elbek remained still and expressionless. No, you’re wrong. I also make it impossible for you to treat that filthy Russian and his American friends, and that’s worth accomplishing. He went back to his meditations.
Ben picked up the ringing phone. “Hello. Ben Corbin.”
“Hello,” said a subdued but familiar voice. “This is Mikhail Ivanovsky. I would like for you to be my lawyer again. I would like for you to come to my room at the hospital now.”
At least he’s not telling me I must come, thought Ben. That’s a start. Still, he had to stick to his guns. “I’m sorry. I can’t represent you unless you’re willing to cooperate with the government. We talked about that last time.”