Lethal Game

by Julie Rowe

  “Cool. Let’s set up a couple other secret codes.”

  Her response was a semi-happy shrug.

  “How about if you want to warn me about something dangerous,” he said. “Let’s decide on specific words or maybe a sentence. What would you say?”

  “Okay,” she said with a small smile. “Dangerous situation equals bad allergies acting up.”

  “Good one,” Connor said. “My turn. For an urgent message, we’ll say it’s time for your medication.”

  She laughed. “I like that. What about an enemy that’s pretending to be a good guy, or a good guy pretending to be an enemy?”

  “How about, I could really use an ice water with a twist of lemon.”

  She glanced at him, a full blown smile on her face. “You’ve been watching too many James Bond movies.”

  “Hey, I loved those as a kid. I watched them with my dad. His movie heroes were John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery.”

  “My dad loved John Wayne, too.”

  Connor lowered his voice and adopted a drawl. “We’re burning daylight.”

  She laughed and her happiness hit him between the eyes like someone had shot him point blank.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d made someone happy.

  “What’s going on over here?” Len Zobel asked as he walked up to the tent. “You two enjoying yourselves?”

  Con was watching Sophia’s face when Len stressed the word enjoying a little too much. Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t miss a beat. She looked down her nose at him, hard to do when she couldn’t be taller than five foot two, and said in a tone that could have done a high school math teacher proud, “A little frivolity lowers blood pressure and cortisol levels, and boosts the immune system. Something every individual in this camp could use, don’t you think?”

  Len blinked, opened his mouth, then frowned and closed it. “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

  “Excellent. Why don’t you take that advice and relay it to Dr. Blairmore.”

  There might have been a why at the beginning of her last sentence, but it was nothing less than an order.

  “Sure,” Len said slowly. He looked at Con. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  He nodded and they walked a few feet away.

  “What the fuck is her problem?” Len asked.

  Con didn’t see the point in hiding the answer. “You are.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You weren’t very nice when you accused us of enjoying ourselves, and she isn’t much of a people-person in the first place, so...”

  “So...?”

  “So.” Con shrugged. “Don’t be an ass.”

  Len grinned at him. “You’re doing her, aren’t you?”

  Not as much as I want to. Fuck, he couldn’t say that. “Do I look stupid to you?”

  Len glanced over his shoulder at Sophia as she unpacked her stuff. “So, if I apologize really nice, I’ve still got a chance?”

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “But—”

  He meant to say she’s my responsibility. What came out was a quiet, certain, “She’s mine.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t sleeping with her?”

  “Only a moron sleeps with a superior officer while deployed with the officer.” Yep, he was a moron.

  “You’re waiting until this little mission is over?” Len watched him for a moment, glanced at Sophia again, then shrugged and nodded. “Don’t blame you, Con. She’s something else to look at.”

  If that’s all Len saw, he was an idiot. “She’s got more going for her inside her head.”

  “I hope you’re right, because the shit that’s going on in this camp is fucking scary.”

  Interesting. Con angled his head at Sophia and Len followed him into their lab’s tent.

  “Dr. Perry, Len isn’t a doctor, but he is a good observer. I thought you might want to hear his take on what’s been happening here the last few days.”

  She put down the gadget she was unpacking and grabbed a notepad and pen out of a pocket. “When did you notice the first problems? Were you here before the outbreak started?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve been shadowing Dr. Blairmore since he and his group arrived about four weeks ago. We’ve had a steady stream of refugees coming in from Syria, but nothing surprising until about four days ago.”

  “What kinds of things were being treated prior to four days ago?”

  “Bullet wounds, cuts, sunburn, broken bones, we had a couple of babies delivered here. All the normal things I guess.”

  She wrote a few things down in the notebook. “And after that?”

  “We had seven or eight kids brought in with high fevers. Then a couple of hours later, a few more. That night, the ones that came in earlier in the day got worse. The doctors gave a bunch of them fluids, but it didn’t seem to do much good. They started dying the next day. Then it wasn’t just kids, it was men, women, kids, old people. Everybody.”

  Len stopped to swallow hard and take a breath, but Con had seen Len strung out on stress before and that guy was as silent and cold as a glacier. This guy, he was milking his story for everything he could get out of it. Even though Con had already told him Sophia wasn’t available.

  “They ran out of IVs yesterday,” Len continued. “Which means the sick started dying faster. Some of them seemed to go crazy. They thrashed around, some had seizures, quite a few choked on their tongues. I helped dig the first burial pit and it almost killed me to see all those little bodies going into the ground.” Len turned away and wiped his eyes.

  The ham.

  “I didn’t mean to get snippy with you earlier, Dr. Perry. I’m really, really tired of taking dead bodies out of that tent over there.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  Con shifted his weight from one leg to the other and had to stop himself from knocking Len on his ass.

  Sophia glanced at Con, then examined Len’s face and calmly said, “Apology accepted, but if he doesn’t believe your sob story—” she pointed right at Con “—neither do I. Don’t try to get into my good books with that shit again.”

  Len’s jaw dropped then he started laughing. “You two are quite the team, and look at me, I’m laughing.” He walked away, shaking his head, disappearing into the hospital tent.

  Sophia sighed. “What a pain in the ass.”

  “I’ve got to agree with you there. I don’t think leaving the Army has done him all that much good.”

  She gave him her complete attention for a moment. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  She arched a brow at him, then turned to get back to work.

  Trust.

  A chill settled over him despite the desert heat.

  He hadn’t questioned her ability to read him or give Len an appropriate answer.

  Trust bound people together. He could already feel the invisible bonds between them squeezing his diaphragm.

  He cleared his throat. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Sure. Could you ask Dr. Blairmore if it would be possible for me to take some fresh blood samples from some of the sick?”

  “How many do you want?”

  “Three. Based on ages. So, one from a child under twelve, one from an otherwise healthy adult and one from someone older than sixty. Wait.” She opened another bag and pulled out disposable masks and gloves. “Wear a mask at all times and gloves if you think you might have to touch something over there. Coughing doesn’t seem to be an issue, but it’s better to be proactive. Can you give our guys some of these as well?” She looked around. “Where are Smoke and River?”

  “They’re looking over the entire camp.” Con made sure all four of their security detail had a coupl
e of masks and sets of gloves each before he put on his own mask and gloves.

  He took a good look around on the short walk to the hospital tent. Things had quieted down now and few people seemed to be moving about. The other side of the tent was another story.

  There was a line-up of people waiting to get in, with a couple of aid workers wearing masks and gloves dealing with them.

  Dr. Blairmore was listening to the heartbeat of an old man who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a month. Len was standing close by also wearing a mask and gloves. He tapped the doctor on the shoulder after he was finished with the old man and pointed at Connor.

  The doctor came over. “How can I help you?”

  “Dr. Perry would like to take three new blood samples, from a child under twelve, a healthy adult and an older person.”

  “Yes, of course, I’m hoping she can identify our pathogen quickly. It might be faster if I take the samples and bring them over right away. Would that work?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Wonderful.” The doctor seemed unusually happy. “Would it be possible to look at her equipment?”

  Not fucking likely. “I’ll see what she says, but she’s determined to identify the pathogen as quickly as possible and might not welcome other inquires until after that’s done.”

  Blairmore nodded. “Yes, I caught that about her. Very focused. Okay, let me take those samples. I’ll bring them as soon as I have them.”

  Con returned to the lab tent to find all her benches organized with analyzers, a centrifuge, a microscope, slides and other lab tools. “Ready to work?”

  “Yes. The blood samples?”

  “Dr. Blairmore said he’d have them here as soon as he can.”

  “Excellent. If this first round of samples doesn’t reveal the pathogen, there are other samples I’m going to need.”

  “Oh?”

  “Cerebral spinal fluid, a lung biopsy, and I’d like tissue samples from some of the dead to rule out or definitively identify certain diseases.”

  “Which diseases?”

  “The list is long.” She raised a brow. “You were there when Max and I discussed it and came up with eighteen possibilities.”

  “Yeah, but now you’ve seen the sick. Can’t you narrow it down a little?”

  She shook her head. “I make no assumptions, I deal only in facts.” She looked at the hospital tent. “Whatever this is, it’s deadly. The records Dr. Blairmore showed me are frightening. There aren’t any survivors.”

  “What?”

  “Every patient who has gotten sick has died within twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  Holy fuck. “That’s not good.”

  What was worse was the determination on Sophia’s face. She was going to figure this shit out or die trying. He’d never backed away from a battle before, but he wanted to abandon this one. Pack Sophia up and get her the fuck out of here.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Why did you think we were sent here?” Sophia asked. “To deal with some run-of-the-mill cholera outbreak?”

  “I didn’t realize how dangerous your work was outside of your fancy lab at the base.”

  She studied him and noted wide eyes and white lips. What had terrified her unflappable bodyguard? Was it the thought of losing another teammate?

  “This is all part of my job,” she said softly. “It’s no different than when you deal with explosives. There’s always the possibility of them blowing up in your face, but if you handle them right, no one gets hurt.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” he said slowly, his gaze the unfocused one of a person deep in thought. “I’ve been assuming this would be like anthrax.”

  “If it were Akbar’s anthrax everyone here would already be dead. No, this is something else. Something deadly, yes, but the symptoms are different. The timing of the disease, too.”

  “What does your gut tell you?”

  “I don’t know enough to guess.”

  When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him and found him staring at her microscope.

  “This isn’t a puzzle or mental exercise. This could be something relatively benign, once we know what it is and if we have a treatment, or it could be something entirely new. The problem with viruses, in particular, is their ability to evolve rapidly. Sometimes that evolution is to our advantage, sometimes it isn’t.”

  “H1N1,” he said with a nod.

  “Yes. It was so close, so very close, to a virus that could have become the next great pandemic. A couple of differences in its genetic sequence and it could have killed hundreds of millions of people. There are literally hundreds of viruses out there like it. And those are the just the ones we know of.”

  “You live in a scary, scary world,” Con told her in a tone that sounded incredulous.

  “Why do you find that so strange?”

  He looked away. “You look so damn innocent. You talk like you’ve never seen a single ugly thing in your life and yet you can imagine the deaths of millions of people.”

  Oh, if only he knew. “Death and I are old companions.” She gave him a weak smile. “There was a time, when I was a child, when death looked likely. I suppose I learned how to think around it then.” She watched him, noted his stiff posture and rigid neck muscles. “You’re a soldier, death can’t be a stranger to you.”

  “No, but I understood the risks and chose to face it. You...you never got that choice.”

  “No, but I’m okay with that. Lots of people get no warning at all. No chance to decide how they want to die, or have the opportunity to choose to do something with the life they have before cancer takes it away. I was lucky.”

  “Yeah. I was lucky, too.”

  He didn’t sound like he thought he was lucky. The way he said the word, all growly and low, made it sound like he wished he hadn’t been lucky at all.

  “You sound like you wished you’d died with your buddies.”

  “I can’t discuss previous missions in an uncleared area like this one.”

  She was going to challenge him on that, but someone was walking toward them. It looked like Dr. Blairmore. A few seconds later he entered their tent and handed over three vials of blood. “Is this enough?”

  “Perfect, thank you.” She took the blood from him and asked, “Can I get some cerebral spinal fluid or a brain biopsy from any of your patients? I’d also like a sputum sample and some tissue samples from other internal organs.”

  “Sputum won’t be too difficult. Tissue samples and CSF, I don’t know.” He frowned. “I’ll have to make some gentle inquiries about that.”

  “Please do. Tissue samples will help with the identification if these blood samples don’t pan out.”

  “I’ll do what I can.” Dr. Blairmore pulled at his fingers like an addict coming off a high.

  “Thank you.” Though Sophia’s words were clearly a dismissal, she didn’t take her gaze off him.

  His gaze jerked from one spot to another, her face, her hands and her equipment as he nodded a couple of times, then rushed back to the hospital tent.

  “There’s something hinky about that guy,” Connor muttered.

  “If by hinky you mean odd, I agree.” She took the vials of blood and began making notations in a notebook and on a small electronic tablet. Normally she could sink into her work with utter focus, but the sounds of moaning and the calls for help in a language she didn’t understand only a little ways away broke through her mental bubble over and over. Because the sounds changed, grew weaker, until one voice after another was replaced by other, newer voices.

  She mourned the loss of a high, childlike voice. Its replacement was the deep bass of a man, yet he spoke the same words in the same panicked tone. A voice that knew it was going out, its flame extinguished by an illness that didn’t yet
have a name.

  She found she had to take a few deep breaths to maintain her composure. She was dying too, just a little slower.

  Despite the distractions, or perhaps because of them, Sophia didn’t stop working until darkness had fallen and Connor put his hand on her arm.

  “Sophia, time to eat.”

  “I will,” she said, trying to slide out from underneath his grasp. “I just have to finish this...”

  Connor put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up so she had to make eye contact with him. “It’s been hours since you last ate or drank anything.” His tone was reasonable, gentle. “Whatever you’re doing can wait while you feed your brain.”

  She was looking at stained slides of the three blood samples she’d been given. They could wait a few minutes.

  She sighed, nodded, stripped off her gloves. She threw them away and washed her hands with a waterless antiseptic she’d brought with her. Con handed her an MRE meal and a bottle of water.

  Smoke and River joined them, their faces silent and serious. Things in the camp couldn’t be going well.

  “Are you seeing any sickness in the camp population?” she asked them.

  River shook his head. “A lot of fear, though.”

  She didn’t blame them. She turned her attention to eating and shoveled the food into her mouth without really tasting it. It went down better that way. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Connor steadily ate his own meal, his gaze on their surroundings, roving, evaluating. “Any revelations?”

  “I’ve eliminated most of the bacteria and some of the more common viruses.”

  “That’s something.”

  “There’s still a long list to go.”

  He gave her a sour look. “That sucks.”

  “Nothing I can do to change that.” She shrugged. “I’m going to need those tissue samples.”

  “Maybe I’ll steal you a body.”

  He said it so grab some milk while you’re at the store normal she couldn’t help a snort.

  They all finished their food at about the same time. Smoke and River went to relieve the marines and let them eat while she went back to work.