National Security

by Marc Cameron

  Zafir released her with a vicious slap.

  “Christian, run!” Carrie hissed, the words gushing from her lungs like air from a ruptured tire. Tears gushed down her face as if from a broken dam.

  But the boy stood fast, clinging to her leg. He stared up wide-eyed at the dark man who looked so much like him.

  “No need to run, my child.” Zafir smiled, transitioning smoothly to English like the wily devil that Carrie knew him to be. “I am your baba... .”

  The thought of her little boy calling this horrible man father was more than Carrie could bear. Without another thought, she jerked the knife from her waistband, slashing wildly at Zafir. Her rage helped free her muscles—but he was faster. He’d faced blades before and a few unaimed gashes on his forearm did not faze him.

  He swatted the blade from her hand as if it was nothing more than a troublesome fly. It clanged to the ground, wedged at an angle against the wood of the bottom step. Zafir stomped hard with the sole his heavy boot, snapping the sharp steel just inches above the hilt.

  “You are a fool,” he jeered, grabbing her by the wrist. “You thought you could kill me with a ridiculous kitchen tool?” Rivulets of dark blood ran along his arm, dripping from the remaining fingers of his disfigured hand. He spat on the ground in disgust. “My son would have been a woman if I had allowed you to raise him.”

  “You can’t have him!” Carrie moaned. Her lungs began to lock again as memories of this man’s power flooded her body and mind. “You ... can’t ... I ... I won’t let you take him!”

  “You?” He laughed. “And what could you possibly do to stop me?” He grabbed the neck of her T-shirt, tearing it away. “Have you got a spoon in there to go with your knife?”

  The sneering smile faded from Zafir’s darkening face. His voice grew ice cold. “I will do as I please.” He drew her to him, squeezing her trembling cheeks between his fingers. “Shall we find a quiet spot in the woods for ... how do you Americans say it? Old times’ sake.” His lips hovered inches from hers. The familiar metallic odor of his breath stabbed at her memory.

  Carrie spat through pursed lips, catching him full in the face.

  Zafir slammed his forehead brutally against the bridge of her nose. Blood gushed from her nostrils. A fountain of colored lights shot through her brain. She staggered backward, tripping over the wooden steps to sprawl backward onto a flagstone walkway.

  ‘Mama!” Christian cried out. Screaming in rage, the boy kicked Zafir in the leg.

  “Ah.” Zafir smiled, scooping up the squirming child. “My son has fire. He is just like me, don’t you think? How long has it been, Carrie? I know you must have missed our times together, my love.” Suddenly calm again, Zafir touched Christian on the tip of the nose. Blood dripped from his wounded arm onto the boy’s shorts and bare leg. Carrie felt her stomach heave. She turned to throw up on the grass.

  Zafir went on, lost in his twisted fantasy. “The awful things you said to me that day when you were released—they do not matter anymore. I am quite certain that after Zafir Jawad has held you in his arms, no other man has been good enough.” He raised an eyebrow. “Am I wrong when I assume that few nights have passed that your thoughts have not turned to me?

  “I must admit, Carrie, my bird—” He set the boy on the ground, patting him on the head with a blood-soaked hand. “I have spent many nights with a picture of you in my mind’s eye ... and in that picture I see the time in which I will end your life.”

  Towering above her, Zafir drew a long knife of his own. Sunlight glinted off the blade as he turned it in his bloody fist. His lips drew back in a yellow snarl.

  “Allah be praised for delivering you to my hand—”

  A thundering roar shook the air as a helicopter rose like an apparition from the live oak trees beyond the yard, appearing out of nowhere. Two men with rifles stood, one on each skid, as the aircraft bore toward them like a falcon coming in for the kill.

  Zafir’s head snapped around, forgetting Carrie to focus on this new approaching threat. Christian pressed his hands to both ears against the deafening noise.

  Carrie sprang to her feet, still reeling from the vicious head butt. In her right hand, she clutched the broken shard of the chef’s knife.

  “Zafir!” she screamed above the thumping din of the chopper. “There’s something you need to know!”

  The Bedouin turned back to face her, startled to see her standing.

  Lunging forward, she plunged the broken blade into his eye, pushing it home until she felt the shuddering scrape of steel against bone and she could push it no farther. Zafir clawed at his face with his gnarled hand, trying to fend her off with the other. He wailed in agony. His legs peddled backward as if creating distance from his tormentor might help him escape the pain.

  Carrie flailed with both hands, slapping at Zafir’s arms, clawing blindly at his face and neck until he fell writhing and screaming on the ground.

  “Stay away from me!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you! I swear I’ll kill you if you touch my son!” Her voice cracked in a hysterical rage. Backing away but never letting her eyes leave Zafir, she reached to find Christian and dragged him to the far side of the deck.

  Vaguely aware that the helicopter had set down in the backyard, she watched through blurry eyes as people in large rubber hoods ran toward Zafir with guns in their hands. She swayed for a long moment on wobbly legs before finally sinking onto the grass beside her son.

  CHAPTER 55

  17 September

  Jericho peered through the six-by-six-inch observation window at the newest patient at the BSL-4 containment. Mahoney and Thibodaux stood on either side of him. Bo stood back a few feet, along the startlingly white tile of the far wall. Though he was a tough and grizzled outlaw biker, he had no stomach for what was on the other side of the air seal and heavy metal door.

  Inside the innermost room of the Slammer, Zafir Jawad lay shackled to a metal hospital bed by one ankle. Blood seeped through white surgical bandages wrapping the left side of his face, covering his sightless eye socket. His dry, hacking cough was audible through a black intercom box on the wall. But for the dignity afforded the dying patient, the scene was eerily reminiscent of the lab Quinn had visited in Al-Hofuf.

  Palmer worked with the military and had the entire BSL-4 containment unit at USAMRIID turned into a modified version of the Slammer. No one on the Hammer Team had been within breathing distance of Zafir without protection, but out of an abundance of caution, everyone who’d had any sort of contact with any of the three would-be martyrs or their backup agents was put under quarantine. Zafir occupied the actual Slammer. A test of his blood had shown that the virus was still fully encased in the protein sheath at the time of his capture, so all but Carrie and her son, who’d been in physical contact with his blood, were allowed to commingle inside the BSL.

  Quinn pushed a silver button flush with the white tile wall. “Zafir,” he said, “we’d like to give you the opportunity to tell your side of the story.”

  “Imbecile!” Zafir scoffed. He turned gingerly, wincing in pain to face the wall away from the observation window. “Do you not see that I am at peace with Allah? I have prepared myself to die long ago.”

  “I know you believe you are prepared.” Quinn kept his voice low, belying the hot torrent that churned in his gut. He firmly believed anger had little place in his chosen profession. Dispassionate action was always better—but he was human. “Things have changed in a great way since you began your plans.” He paused. “Many, many things.”

  “Tell me ...” The Bedouin turned again, despite his pain, tilting his head toward the door, narrowing bloodshot eyes. The flesh around his lips hung loose around his mouth, giving him a grotesque, clownlike effect. Pandora was beginning to take her toll on his body. “Are you the one called Jericho?”

  “I am indeed.”

  Zafir swallowed, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Then I will tell you this about the sheikh. He is a very wise man. Make no mis
take, he will find out who you are and he will come for you.”

  “Tell me where he is and I will go to him.”

  “He will flay the skin from those you love.” Zafir’s voice rose from a hoarse whisper into a menacing growl. “He will send your women—”

  “As I said—” Quinn pressed the intercom again, interrupting the tirade. His patience was at an end. “Circumstances have changed. Do not forget, we are in possession of your suicide drug. You will have the opportunity to die, as you wished, but, as you are fully aware, your death will not come as quickly. Perhaps you remember the faces of the American soldiers and the innocent young girl you infected with this same virus back in Al-Hofuf... .”

  Chains clanked against the metal bed as Zafir jerked against his shackles. A hollow scream—the wailing roar of a damned soul—poured from the intercom box until Quinn pushed the button to silence it.

  Three doors down from Zafir, in another soundproof room, Carrie Navarro and her son sat on the edge of a hospital bed behind a glass partition. A careful examination of Zafir’s blood showed a ninety-nine-percent chance that his virus had not yet matured to the contagious phase when they’d had contact. Because of this—not to mention all the poor woman had been through—Megan had allowed mother and son to be housed together. But there was still a great deal to learn about the Pandora virus, so they were not allowed to roam around with the others.

  Mahoney pressed the intercom button as they walked past their isolation room. “Hey, Carrie. Hey, Christian. How’s it going in there?”

  Everyone in the hall waved. Christian waved from the safety of his mother’s lap. Carrie smiled. “Hey,” she said wanly. Her physical recovery was going to be much easier than her mental one. Luckily she had her little boy and, Megan thought, as she looked at Thibodaux and both of the Quinn brothers beaming through the glass, that lucky little boy now had three extremely protective godfathers.

  “You know, my brother’s still stuck on his ex-wife, right?” Bo sidled up next to Mahoney after they said good night to Navarro and walked down the long hall toward the outer lab and the room that would serve as their chow hall and common area for the next two weeks of quarantine.

  Under the pitiful gaze of a love-struck Justin, Megan grinned, tossing her head in the best flirt she could muster. “I’d heard that.”

  “Well,” Bo said, “the big dude from Louisiana tells me Jericho took you for a spin on his Beemer. If you’re not sick of Quinn boys after all this, I could take you for a ride on a sure-enough American bike when we get out of this place.”

  Mahoney looked at Jericho, who shrugged.

  “I can only vouch for him as a good kid brother,” he said. “Beyond that, I’m pretty certain he belongs in prison.”

  “Hey dude, malum prohibitum not malum in se.” Bo hooked a thumb toward his chest, showing off his Latin. “The things I choose to do are wrong, only because The Man says they are. Nothing I do is inherently bad.” He raised a brow, looking directly at Megan with a sly grin. “Well, almost nothing.”

  Megan bit her bottom lip. The notion of taking some time away from work with the rough-and-tumble Bo Quinn was an interesting proposition. After spending the past few days getting to know men like Jericho and Jacques, she just couldn’t come to grips with going back to the plain-vanilla types she’d dated in her previous life.

  Though the idea of being alone with Bo the biker terrified her as much as the thought of getting a tattoo, it beckoned to the same sense of exploration that had pulled her into field research in the first place. She’d heard of women who married soldiers, police officers, or firefighters and when they divorced or found themselves alone for whatever reason, always went back to someone from the same adventurous ilk. Such men were what they knew—and in the end, she supposed, the very thing they craved.

  Justin steadfastly refused to leave the BSL, making up reason after reason he should stay. Once they’d all come in and shared his air, he was committed and had to stay for the duration. Now he plodded along a few steps behind Megan wherever she went, his shoulders stooped, his face hangdog. Completely intimidated by the muscular biker with a tattoo of a black octopus on his forearm, the poor kid’s chin quivered when he spoke. His eyes fluttered as if he might break into tears at any moment. Megan knew it was cruel, but she had to stifle a giggle every time she saw him.

  Thibodaux walked a few yards ahead talking on his cell phone, waving his free arm as he spoke in animated Italian to his Delta-Whiskey. He suddenly spun to face the others, blocking any further progress down the hall. Moving his head slowly from side to side like a disbelieving buffalo, a huge grin smeared across his face. “It must have happened before my last deployment to Iraq... .”

  “What?” Mahoney asked, though the answer was written all over the big Marine’s face.

  Thibodaux grabbed Jericho by both shoulders with his huge paws, dancing him around in a tight circle. “Yet once again, l’ami. Yours truly is gonna be a papa... .”

  “Good grief, Jacques.” Mahoney’s mouth fell open. “How many will this make?”

  “Seven,” Thibodaux said, lost in the idea of having another child.

  “As a trained epidemiologist, I think I need to have a talk with your wife,” Mahoney said. “There must be something in the air at your house.”

  “Oh there was, beb.” The big Cajun winked a glistening eye. “Her feet.”

  “You think we got it all?” Mahoney asked Jericho, after everyone else was asleep and the two of them sat in the chow hall. A carton of butter pecan ice cream sat on the table between them.

  Quinn sighed. He was exhausted down to the marrow of his bones, but his mind raced with thoughts of a dozen scenarios, none of them good.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But we can account for the martyrs because of the photographs. I only found three vials missing from the case in Al-Hofuf. If we assume that each martyr brought a vial of toxin to commit suicide, we got them all. There could be another lab, but my guess is Zafir would have been a little more on the smug side had there been others with the virus walking around somewhere out there.”

  Mahoney stuck her spoon in the ice cream and leaned forward on the table, resting her chin on folded arms. “It’s almost too overwhelming... .”

  “I guess most things are,” Quinn said, “if you think about them too long. You’re the one who decided to name this particular virus Pandora.”

  “It fit,” Mahoney said.

  “In the Pandora myth,” Jericho said, resting his hand on top of hers, “do you remember what was left in the box after our girl opened it and let all the evil stuff out to torment the world?”

  “Ah.” Mahoney smiled. “Hope.”

  “That’s right. Hope,” Quinn said. “I have to hope for the best, or I’d go crazy doing this kind of work.”

  “Yeah, about that.” Mahoney sat up again. She took another bite of ice cream before pointing at him with her spoon. “I wanted to talk to you about this job of yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well.” Mahoney shook her head, leaning back in her chair to look him up and down. “I’ve been following you for less than a week and I feel as though I’ve been beaten half to death. I can’t imagine doing this sort of work all the time. I think my head would explode.”

  Jericho chuckled. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Doc. You stayed icy calm out there, through all of this. It’s not so hard, what I do. Win Palmer is right. I’m a hammer. Someone gives me a nail to hit and I hit it. Simple really, especially when the world is full of so many nails.”

  “But it’s so taxing,” Mahoney said. “On you and your family.”

  “That it is.”

  “Then why?” she asked. “Why do you keep doing it?”

  Jericho thought for a long moment, tapping his icecream spoon on the edge of the carton. His mind drifted back to when he was fourteen and happened on the college bullies on the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. He scooped another bite of ice cream an
d grinned.

  “It’s my job.”

  EPILOGUE

  Northeastern Afghanistan

  Sheikh Husseini al Farooq used an olive wood walking stick to negotiate the rock-strewn trail in the mountainous region near the Khyber Pass, southwest of Jalalabad. The evening was cool, the shadows barren of the air he so desperately needed. The wizened old coffee bean of a village headman moved down the path with the dexterity of a mountain ibex. His barrel chest swayed back and forth as he waddled swiftly on short, crooked legs toward the dark entrance of a stone hut built into the side of the cliff.

  The sheikh stopped, resting on the stick to catch his breath. He knew where they were going now so it didn’t matter that the headman outpaced him. Another man might have been embarrassed that the old man was faster considering the fact that he carried the sheikh’s two heavy bags. But Farooq was used to others doing the work for him. He was accustomed to opulence, fine silks—and getting exactly what he wanted.

  All that had changed because of an infidel named Jericho.

  Two days after the unthinkable capture of his servant Zafir Jawad, a source from Baghdad sent word to Farooq’s safe site in the mountains of Northern Pakistan. He was now the most wanted fugitive in the Global War on Terror. The messenger had flaunted the news, as if it was something of which to be proud. But Farooq knew better. His friends in the Saudi government had turned against him at once. With a bounty of five million U.S. dollars on his head, he didn’t know whom to trust. Government spies in Pakistan could be purchased for a cup of strong coffee. Iraq was out of the question, and the Saudis had made it clear they would be happy to have him beheaded and collect the easy reward. He had embarrassed them, and for that, there would be no forgiveness. From the time he’d heard the news, he’d been constantly on the run.