The King of Plagues jl-3

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Agreed,” said Church.

  “Or maybe he’s part of this thing, whatever it is, and got either cold feet or an attack of conscience.”

  “And if the Kings are involved we might finally have a doorway into them.”

  I nodded. “Couple questions, though.”

  “Go.”

  “First … why me? Where the hell’s the rest of the DMS?”

  “Everyone healthy enough to report for work has been scrambled and assigned to investigation or protection in the States. As for our teams here, Gog is still on the job in Prague and Magog has gone dark in Afghanistan, though that’s expected at this stage of that operation. We can’t get either of them here in time and this situation needs a shooter.”

  I gave him a sour look. “Swell. Joe Ledger, gun for hire.”

  “If your feelings are bruised, Captain, let me put it more delicately: this situation needs finesse.”

  “Thanks, but I wasn’t about to break out in tears.”

  Hu made a small grunting sound that I was free to interpret any way I wanted. I considered siccing Ghost on him.

  “We do have some local assets, however,” said Church. “Barrier is sending Lionheart Team as backup.”

  “I thought we had to keep the Brits out of this,” I said.

  “Officially, we have to keep the British government out of it,” corrected Church. “Brigadier Prebble, head of Barrier’s Tactical Field Office in Scotland, is an old friend of mine. He understands our need for discretion and he’ll be meeting us in a few minutes.”

  “Does Benson Childe know about this?”

  “Officially, no. Unofficially, I briefed him on the matter and he advised me that Prebble’s goodwill is only going to last as far as containment. If there’s any kind of biological breach, then Prebble will disown us. As well he should.”

  “As you would in the same circumstance.”

  “Of course.”

  The limo pulled out of traffic and through the gates of a large estate. A military helicopter was parked on the lawn behind the house, the rotors already turning, the engine whine rising to a scream.

  Interlude Fourteen

  Crown Island

  St. Lawrence River, Ontario, Canada

  Four Months Ago

  Gault stepped out of the steaming shower and reached for a towel. It wasn’t on the rack. Instead Eris moved out of the mist and handed it to him.

  Gault snatched the towel from her and pressed it to his naked, scarred face, turning half-away. But Eris moved closer still. She still wore the bikini top, but she had shed the tight pants and wore only the scraps of bright cloth that comprised the bottom of the bikini. Her body was strong and taut, with hard muscles under tanned skin.

  “Let me see,” she said, touching the hand that pressed the towel to his face.

  “No,” he said hoarsely.

  “Don’t be a child, Sebastian,” she said in her low and smoky voice. “Neither of us is as pretty as we used to be. Life and time are monsters and they gnaw at us.”

  She kissed the back of his hand and then tugged lightly at the towel.

  “Please don’t …”

  But Gault knew from too many years and too many encounters that Lady Eris could not be told no. She kissed his hand and tugged, and finally he yielded, as he had always yielded to her. She tossed the towel aside and touched his chin, turning his face toward her. Her sea green eyes took in everything, missed nothing. The smile on her parted lips never wavered as each of the bruises and surgical scars was revealed.

  “This will heal,” she said softly.

  “Not all of it.”

  She touched the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, then drifted her fingertips across her throat. “Neither will this. But only fools and mortals worry about these things.”

  “You aged; I melted,” he said as she moved even closer. Her full breasts brushed the naked skin of his stomach. “Surely that’s proof of mortality.”

  “No,” she said as she plucked the strings of her bikini. The pieces fell away except for the triangle that had covered her left breast, which was momentarily held in place by the pressure of one taut nipple against the rippled muscles of his abdomen. “No,” she said again, “we’re not mortals.”

  She kissed his mouth, his cheek, the corner of his eye, her breath furnace hot against the crooked lines of his scars.

  “We’re gods,” she whispered.

  Gault suddenly pulled her to him, crushing her against his chest, her softness pressed to him, his hardness pressed to her, the steam swirling around them both. Her lips and hungry hands were everywhere, touching him, stroking him, guiding him toward wetness.

  “Gods,” he breathed.

  And then they both cried out together as two gods became one.

  Interlude Fifteen

  T-Town, Mount Baker, Washington State

  Three and a Half Months Before the London Event

  Circe tried not to fidget as Maj. Grace Courtland, Mr. Church’s top field agent and one of Circe’s closest friends, read through the Goddess Report.

  Grace was slim and fit and was known throughout the counterterrorism community as the Iron Maiden. It wasn’t an insult. Grace was a top-of-the-game shooter for the DMS, which made her the best of the best of the best.

  “Bloody hell,” Grace said as she closed the report.

  “Am I crazy or is there something there?”

  Grace smiled. “Both, I daresay.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “The FBI sent us a report on this a few weeks ago and they were all over the place with their suspicions, and none of their geniuses came within pissing distance of what you have here. This is brilliant.”

  “Really?”

  “No, I’m lying to you, you daft cow. Of course! Agencies are nodding at the Goddess postings and dismissing them as an aftereffect or a symptom.”

  “I know! But the dates clearly show that the posts predate the last couple of spikes in hate crimes.”

  “No doubt, but there are always other events that can be held up as causal factors. An Army drone hits a village mosque instead of a Taliban opium warehouse and bang!” Grace tapped the report with a forefinger. “But they’ll have to take you seriously once they read this.”

  “They have read it. This same report. They see my name on the document and they don’t take me seriously.”

  “Ah.” Grace Courtland pursed her lips. “Then the problem is the same one you’ve been facing since you started mucking about with the Goddess thing, love. There’s nowhere to go with it. That’s the trouble with the Internet—there are too many ways to create and maintain anonymity. The FBI is all about following bread crumb trails. Here there’s no trail to follow, and those wankers are too busy playing with their beef bayonets to try and find a way. That and they’re swamped trying to stop the Chinese ghost net from stealing every last effing secret we have.” She paused. “Is there any chance the Chinese are involved in this? We’ve been dealing with wave after wave of their cyberterrorism these last few years.”

  “Impossible to say.”

  They sat and thought about it.

  “So,” Circe said, “you see my problem. Even when I can get someone to agree that there’s something going on out there, no one can offer a single suggestion on what to do about it.”

  “Mm,” Grace murmured. “If this was piss easy we’d have solved all the world’s problems already. As it is … best I can do for you, love, is bring this to Aunt Sallie. She has the cybercrimes portfolio right now.”

  “But this isn’t a cybercrime per se. More like hate mongering, and technically that’s allowed under free speech.”

  “Well, as we don’t have a division for cyber fucking-about we’ll have to go with what we have.” She lifted the report. “Can I keep this copy? I’d like to read it again on the plane.”

  Circe chewed her lip. “Um … Hugo told me to keep this on the down low as far as the DMS is concerned. He said I could talk to you o
ff the record. He’d kill me if he knew you had a copy of that.”

  Grace smiled and tucked the report into her bag. “If you don’t tell him, I won’t.”

  “Thanks!” Circe smiled weakly. “Do you have to get right back?”

  Grace smiled. “Not this minute. First … I want to tell you about something that you have to swear to God you won’t tell anyone else.”

  Circe crossed her heart and held her hand to God. “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you his name. Security reasons, you understand.” Grace Courtland leaned forward and put her elbows on the desk. “But … I think I’ve bloody well fallen in love.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Over Scottish Airspace

  December 18, 2:09 P.M. GMT

  We flew to the outskirts of Glasgow and transferred to an unmarked black Barrier helo. The cabin was soundproofed. Once we were airborne, an officer came out of the cockpit. Medium height, with ramrod posture, a neatly trimmed mustache, and a black beret on which was the medieval castle emblem of Barrier. He gave Church a “now we’re in it” look, and Church nodded. The officer smiled at me and held out a small, hard hand.

  “Brigadier Ashton Prebble,” he said in a city Scots burr.

  “Joe Ledger, sir.”

  “Yes,” he drawled in a way that suggested he already knew who and what I was. “Pleasure to meet you, Captain Ledger. Glad to hear you’re back in the game. Timing couldn’t be more critical.”

  I snorted. “Nothing like jumping in with both feet.”

  Prebble had eyes like blueberries: dark and cold.

  Ghost looked him up and down but didn’t react in any challenging way to Prebble. I’ve started trusting the dog’s judgment of people. Prebble was “one of us.”

  “Ashton,” Church said, “would you bring Captain Ledger up to speed on where we’re going?”

  “Of course. We’re flying to Fair Isle,” said Prebble. The table between us was actually a computer, and he called up an aerial shot of a tiny speck of a place in the North Sea, halfway between Orkney and Shetland. “We’ve managed to quarantine the island and cut off all telephone, cell, and radio communication. We even shut down the Internet. Nothing’s getting off the island and we have gunboats in the waters.”

  “Has anyone noticed?” I asked.

  “They have, but we can play the London Hospital card for all manner of blackouts at the moment. Small mercies.”

  I glanced at Church. “No offense to the brigadier, but what’s on- and off-the-record here?”

  “Brigadier Prebble is in the family, Captain.”

  That was one of Church’s catchphrases. It meant that Prebble was in the select circle of people among whom there were no secrets. Well, none except those Church kept to himself.

  Prebble punched buttons that tightened the satellite image of the facility. “Fair Isle is five kilometers long, about three wide. It’s almost entirely surrounded by jagged cliffs. Seventy-three civilian residents, not counting the live-in staff at the facility. The civilians live in the southern third of the island, which is where the fertile ground is. They live in crofts along here.” He tapped the screen to indicate several small enclosed parcels of arable land, then rolled the curser to shift the image to the central and northern sections. “The northern part is largely rough grazing and rocky moorland. There’s a lighthouse on the south end, and a bird sanctuary.”

  I bent low and studied the aerial image. There was a compound at the northwest tip of the island. A handful of functional buildings surrounded by trees and a fence.

  “There are six buildings comprising the Fair Isle Research Endeavor—or FIRE, if you enjoy trite acronyms. According to public charter, the lab is there to study bacteria that affect fish and mollusks. And, before you ask, Captain, there really are some rare and even unique bacteria in those waters that do affect the marine life. It’s very good cover, and I believe a portion of the facility is actually dedicated to that purpose. Am I correct, Doctor?”

  Hu nodded. “About twenty percent of the work at the lab, and they’ve actually made some progress, too. Last two years have seen a four percent increase in clam harvests.”

  “Big whoop,” I said. “What about the other eighty percent?”

  “Ah,” said Prebble as he suppressed a smile. “According to what I’m not supposed to know, there are some very, very nasty bugs being studied there.”

  “Very nasty,” Hu agreed. “Baker and Schloss are working to develop a TRB, specifically an airborne strain of Ebola.”

  I stared at him in horror. “Why the hell would—?”

  “Proactive defense,” Church cut in.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning,” said Hu, “that someone is inevitably going to develop airborne Ebola. You busted one lab yourself, Captain.”

  “Yes, and those were nutcases, Doc. What are our guys doing? Working on a cure—?”

  “A cure, a treatment, or some prophylactic stratagem,” said Hu.

  I didn’t like it, but I understood it. Ebola is about 97 percent contagious and almost always lethal. Obtaining research samples was necessarily difficult, because if a terrorist organization ever launched a weaponized version of it and we hadn’t done our homework we wouldn’t live long enough to regret the lack of preparedness. Still sucked, though.

  “Bloody marvelous, isn’t it?” Prebble said with a tight smile. “And your lot brought the virus here by the gallon. Can’t say I’m very happy about it.”

  “Can’t say I am, either,” said Church. “After 9/11 there was an overwhelming fear of being perceived by the public as unprepared. It was a bigger concern than actually developing a workable response to a biological attack. That pushed several likely pathogens into active testing immediately rather than waiting until a secure facility could be built somewhere in the U.S. And there may have been a secondary agenda. Some of the people who put this plan together may not have wanted to risk testing on U.S. soil. They felt it was more ‘prudent’ to exploit the protection of an ally with a strong military in case of an attack by a terrorist group.” He glanced at me. “No, Captain, don’t look at the logic too closely. It doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny.”

  “Politics,” said Prebble, giving that word all the bile it deserved.

  “Politics,” agreed Church. “By U.S., British, and international law this lab is illegal. It was black book authorized following 9/11, but it was approved too hastily and then given to a private company to manage. If you try to make sense out of that you’ll hurt yourself.”

  “Aye,” said Prebble. “I can’t stand on a pedestal here, because we made the same mistakes. America wasn’t the only country scrambling to retrofit itself for antiterrorism and counterterrorism preparedness.”

  “You guys are killing my idealism here,” I said.

  “Let’s hope that’s all we kill,” said Ashton. It wasn’t a joke and nobody smiled.

  “So,” I said, “we seem to be busting our ass to get there, but everything you’re telling me is past tense.”

  Hu said, “This morning, FIRE senior researcher Dr. Charles Grey came into work and brought his wife and son with him. They passed through all the security checkpoints, and he used his keycard to get them all into the bioresearch wing. Totally against all protocols, of course. We reviewed the security tapes, and when one lab tech tried to protest Grey flat out threatened to fire the guy. The tech backed down, more concerned for his job than for protocols.” He sneered. “Accidents are always about the human element.”

  For once I could find no fault with his statement.

  Church called up a floor plan on the tabletop computer. “FIRE is built in layers, with a false front around the exterior to make it look like an inexpensive university-level lab. There are offices and staff rooms, and so on, built in the outer ring. They connect at two points through air locks to the main lab complex. Inside there is another and much more sophisticated air lock that accesses what they call the Hot Room. That’s where th
e work on the class-A pathogens is done, and there’s a glass-enclosed and pressuresealed observation tank in the center—the staff calls it the fish tank—and the biological vault is in there. Everyone working in the Hot Room can see the bio-vault, so nobody working there will be surprised when it’s opened. There are also warning lights and buzzers of different kinds that go off when the unlocking codes are being entered.” Church looked up from the screen. “Dr. Grey called the entire staff into the Hot Room and shortly after that the video surveillance system went out.”

  “How? Aren’t those systems supposed to have redundancies?”

  “Yes,” Church agreed, “so we can presume that they were deliberately taken off-line.”

  I thought about that. “Then he can’t be doing this alone. No way the security cameras are controlled from the Hot Room or the other labs.”

  Prebble smiled approvingly. “Good call. No, the fail-safe on the surveillance system has a set of manual controls, and they are in the security office on the other side of the complex. So figure at least one other person. Could be more.”

  “Is there a shutdown protocol?” I asked. “And is that connected to the door seals?”

  Hu said, “There are manual controls for all functions of the outer lab and the Hot Room, but it’s only used when the bio-vault is locked and the fish tank sealed. They use it when they’re installing new equipment or making repairs to doors and such, and under those conditions the bio-vault with the active samples is sealed and guarded. That system is connected via satellite uplinks to coded routers in a national security satellite. The uplink has been terminated at the source. Same for the hard-lines that connect to the TAT-fourteen transatlantic telecommunications cable. The satellite and cable are functioning normally, but both report a disconnection.”

  “There’s got to be a fail-safe … a dead man’s switch.”

  “Sure,” said Hu. “But like everything, there is a bypass to it. Bug has pinged it and he’s sure that the system has been taken off-line. In fact, the only way to bypass this kind of security is through deliberate and coordinated human action.”