Target Zero

by Jack Mars

  He expected an argument, but Maya simply said, “All right. How can I reach you if I need to?”

  “I can’t give you this number, but I can text you,” he said. Chances were good that even if the CIA wasn’t monitoring calls, they would be monitoring activity—but to hell with them. He would talk to his girls if they needed him. “It’ll show up as ‘unknown,’ but at least you can message me.”

  “Good,” she said. Then, quieter, she asked, “You’ll be careful, right?”

  “Of course.”

  Agent Watson hung his head out from the door of the Gulfstream. “Zero,” he called out, “let’s go. Wheels up in one minute.”

  Reid nodded to him. To Maya he said, “I have a, uh, ‘mutual friend’ of ours with me.” He knew she would understand who he meant. Maya and Sara had spent a few days in a safe house under the watchful eye of Agent Watson.

  “Be safe,” she told him. “I love you.”

  “Love you too, sweetheart.” He ended the call, hefted his black bag, and boarded the Gulfstream. He took a seat beside Watson, across the aisle on the eight-seat, sixty-five-million-dollar aircraft. It had a max speed of nearly seven hundred miles per hour, which would put them over Europe in less than five hours’ time. As the plane began to taxi he took out his phone again and texted Maya’s number: Reply here if you need to reach me.

  Two minutes later, the small jet roared into the sky.

  Watson twisted halfway in his seat to address his companions. “Our first destination is Barcelona,” he told them. “Interpol has established a temporary presence there in a quarantine zone. They believe the perpetrators may still be in the country; it’s coastal, and with international travel shut down, they would need a way to get the virus out of Spain. We’re to rendezvous with Interpol and, with a little luck, gain a lead from their intel.”

  Reid shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the way to go about this.” Something about the Barcelona attack felt strange to him; the target itself was seemingly random, unless the people responsible had some sort of vendetta. But since no one had claimed responsibility for the attack, he could not help thinking that Spain could very well be a red herring.

  “Well, those are our orders, straight from the Secretary of Defense,” Watson retorted.

  Barnard, seated behind Reid, leaned forward with interest. “What makes you say that, Agent Steele?”

  Reid thought for a moment before he said, “The researchers in Siberia were expecting a specific someone.” He opened the cloud storage drive on his phone and pulled up the grad student’s profile. “Bastien Renault, twenty-five years old, medium build, of French nationality. Furthermore, the gun used at the expedition site was a MAB PA-15… a French handgun that hasn’t been in production since 1982. I believe the perpetrator, the person who took Renault’s place, is likely a Frenchman, mid-twenties or passable as such. He obviously knows enough about virology to masquerade as an intern for four days, regardless of whether or not he performed the actual mutation.”

  Barnard nodded slowly, his eyebrows raised—he nearly looked impressed. “All right, Agent, Let’s say we’re looking for a young Frenchman, as young as mid-twenties, with the knowledge and skills to have mutated variola major . While that is certainly a profile, it’s also still quite a needle in a haystack.”

  “Besides,” Watson added, “there’s no lead to follow or thread to pull on the virologist. Swedish law enforcement has already turned over every stone—the university, the dead student’s apartment, all of it. They’ve got nothing, which means we’ve got nothing. Barcelona is where it started; Barcelona is where we’re headed. If we do our jobs right and coordinate our efforts with Interpol, the trail will lead back to the virologist.”

  Reid sighed. He thought back to that same morning, which already felt like several days ago, in the classroom at Georgetown. He suddenly sat up straight, his mind racing. “What makes you think our guy was ever in Barcelona?” he asked. “Why would he risk his own neck to release the virus?”

  “Who in the hell would be willing to do it for him?” Watson asked.

  “That I don’t know.” Siege of Kafa , he thought. He had just been lecturing about a similar topic. “You know, Genghis Khan was an early adopter of biological weapons—namely, the bubonic plague. He was known to send infected soldiers into native populations who refused to yield, in order to spread their illness and thin their numbers.”

  Dr. Barnard scrutinized Reid. “That is true. And sometimes he would catapult their infected bodies over walls. It’s very interesting, but what do thirteenth-century Mongolian conquest tactics have to do with modern biological weapons?”

  “My point is that if I was the virologist, assuming he’s the mastermind behind all this, I’d be as far away from Spain as possible. And based on what we know, I’d be willing to bet he isn’t in France, either,” Reid explained. “If I was him, I’d be in hiding. I would have sent someone else to release the virus, whether wittingly or not.”

  Barnard stroked his chin stubble. “Send an infected soldier in,” he said slowly, “to spread the illness. It’s plausible—particularly with the rate of infection we’re seeing.”

  “You’ve mentioned the speed of this strain a couple of times now,” Watson noted. “How fast are we talking?”

  “The WHO is still working to round out a definitive profile of the virus, but…” The doctor paused to remove his glasses and clean them on his shirt. “From what they can tell so far, incubation from initial infection to symptomatic is between one and two hours. The first symptoms to manifest are headache, fever, and mild nausea, each of which compounds exponentially over the very brief life cycle of the virus. Internal temperatures are rising about one degree per hour. Then acute tussis begins, or coughing from fluid in the lungs. All bleeding is internal; there are no external sores as seen in traditional smallpox cases and variola minor .

  “From what they’re seeing in Spain, it’s typically the lungs that bleed first, making it difficult to breathe. That, in conjunction with high fever, has been commonly causing unconsciousness or at least disorientation. Bleeding of other internal regions is next, generally the abdominal cavity, and eventually internal hemorrhaging until death.”

  Reid closed his eyes as the doctor spoke. He had no desire to see any of that for himself, not after the description and seeing Barnard’s slackened features. “How long does it take?”

  “The WHO’s current profile of the virus is an average of seven to eight hours from infection to mortem.”

  Reid’s stomach turned at the thought. He couldn’t imagine how horrifying it would be to fall sick in the morning and be dead before sundown—without any hope for a cure.

  All three of their phones chimed simultaneously. Watson checked his. “An update,” he announced. “Assistant Director Riker says Interpol’s got something. Whatever it is must be sensitive. They won’t upload it to us for fear of a leak, but they’re saying it’s urgent.”

  Reid almost scoffed. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Spain felt like a ploy, a way to throw the authorities off the scent, but it didn’t matter now; Barcelona was where they were headed. And even though he thought it could be a waste of time, time that they could be spending tracking the virologist, he was morbidly curious about what Interpol had discovered.

  Dr. Barnard sighed deeply, trying to contain the anxiety that was clearly scrawled across his face and brow. “Ground zero,” he murmured. “Let us hope to whomever you pray to that we won’t have to one day say, ‘Where it all began.’”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Reid glanced out the window as the Gulfstream descended over El Prat Airport in Barcelona. Local time was six thirty in the morning. The sun was just beginning to rise, casting a purplish light over the transitioning sky.

  It was an eerie sight. El Prat was shut down, void of life. No planes arrived or departed, and the tarmac was silent and empty. As they touched down, Reid could see that most of the lights inside the airport were on,
but through the large plate glass windows the place was a ghost town.

  Watson opened the door and lowered the staircase as the G650 came to a stop. Out on the runway the weather was chilly and a slight breeze blew. Birds chirped from nearby, nesting atop the glass terminal.

  Strange , Reid thought. I’ve never seen a silent airport before. This is what the end of the world would look like.

  A single man jogged over to them. He wore a charcoal gray suit and loafers, and sported a pencil-thin mustache on his tanned face. Despite the current situation, Reid couldn’t help but grin fiercely as the man approached. He held out his hand to greet the Interpol agent who had helped him and Maria stop Amun’s plot in Switzerland.

  “Baraf,” Reid said. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Agent Vicente Baraf warmly returned the smile. “You as well, Agent Steele. Though I do wish the circumstances were better.”

  “Agreed,” said Reid. “This is Agent Watson, CIA, and Dr. Barnard from the CDC.”

  “Yes, your director told me you were coming. Please, follow me.” Baraf led the way as the four men walked hastily toward the terminal. “Interpol is working with the WHO to contain the outbreak and using the airport as a temporary base of operations while it’s shut down,” he explained. “El Prat is about twelve miles from the city center, so we’re outside the known infection radius. The WHO has established a quarantine area in the long-term parking lot on the other side of the building—”

  “I’d like to see it,” said Barnard suddenly.

  “There’s no time,” Watson replied just as quickly. “We’re here for intel, and that’s all.”

  “What I would like to show you is extremely sensitive,” Baraf continued. “We cannot risk it getting out to the public.”

  Reid understood right away what that likely meant—Interpol had found some solid evidence of this being a biological attack. If the public was aware, it could incite a mass panic. And hopefully , he thought, it includes a lead.

  Baraf led them to one of the airline lounges, which Interpol had turned into a makeshift command center. Nearly every available horizontal surface was taken up by computers, radios, and communications gear. A dozen or so suited Interpol agents scurried about or sat at temporary workstations, working feverishly on their assigned tasks.

  “This way.” Baraf showed them to the far corner of the room, where a stout, round-faced man sat before a dual-monitor display. On each screen was some sort of footage, which he seemed to be scrutinizing intensely.

  “Sawyer,” said Baraf, “these are Agents Steele and Watson of the CIA. Agents, Mr. Sawyer is the best technical analyst at Interpol’s disposal.”

  Sawyer blinked at them. His eyes were bloodshot and circled; the man had clearly been up all night. “Agents,” he nodded, his voice thick with a London accent. “I wish I could say it’s a pleasure.”

  “Show them what you and your team have found,” Baraf prodded.

  “Right, of course.” Sawyer rubbed his bleary eyes. “As you know, the first wave of patients came to Hospital de l’Esperanca yesterday evening. The medical staff there interviewed them as best they could—those that were coherent, anyway. Eventually a common thread emerged: many of them had ridden the subway earlier in the day. Not just the subway, but the very same line .” He toggled to another tab on his computer, and the left-side monitor switched from the security footage to a map of Barcelona’s subway system. “This line here, the red line. My team and I have spent hours poring over camera footage from the subway stations, and finally, we found this.”

  Sawyer switched the right monitor to another video and played it. On the screen, a small crowd of citizens waited for the approaching train to come to a stop, and then stepped aboard as the doors opened. The tech analyst paused the image.

  “Right here,” he said. He pointed to a young man among them, barely more than a child, it seemed. He looked a bit derelict; his hair was long, climbing over his ears, and his cheeks were patchy with dark hair. He wore a thin sweater and, admittedly, looked out of place among the Spanish citizens.

  “Who are we looking at?” Watson asked.

  “That,” Sawyer answered, “is the first reported case of infection, as well as the first fatality of the outbreak.”

  “Our patient zero,” Barnard murmured.

  “Now, here’s the thing,” Sawyer continued. “He gets on the train and rides the line up and down for a while. Then he staggers off the train, obviously ill. He manages to get to the street before he collapses, and an emergency room nurse on her way to work helps him to the hospital.”

  Reid nodded gravely. “So the first infected, this kid, he carried the virus into the city. He rode the subway on purpose to infect commuters.” His hunch had been right.

  “Precisely,” Baraf said quietly. “Already the WHO has received reports of infection from outside the city, in Manresa, Tarragona, and even one alleged case in Carcassonne.”

  Reid balked. “It reached France?”

  “Why didn’t we know about this?” Barnard insisted.

  “It has happened only inside the last hour, while you were in the air,” Baraf explained. “The WHO is doing everything in its power to stop the spread of the virus, but their resources are drawing thin. Since you’ve left the US, every airport in the EU has been shut down. International travel is currently prohibited, and anyone exhibiting symptoms is undergoing immediate quarantine.”

  “You were right, Agent,” Dr. Barnard murmured to Reid. “Our perpetrator sent an infected into the city, just like the Mongols.”

  Reid was in no mood to muster an “I told you so.” He couldn’t imagine what the potential ramifications might be if such a deadly disease was released in the United States, especially on the East Coast. It would spread like wildfire. “Watson,” he said quietly, “report back to Cartwright and Riker with all this. They’ll want to know what’s going on, if they don’t already.”

  Watson nodded and excused himself to make the call.

  “Agent Steele,” said Baraf, “I’m afraid there is more I must show you. Sawyer, if you would please.”

  The Interpol tech switched the feed on his right monitor to a black-and-white video. He recognized the scene immediately as the inside of a hospital, with four doctors and nurses crowded around a bed as they worked on a patient. As one of the doctors stepped aside, Reid saw the patient’s face—it was the boy, the first infected. They had cut away his thin sweater. His chest looked hollow, almost skeletal, and it heaved up and down rapidly. He was struggling to breathe.

  “This is security footage from the emergency room of Hospital de l’Esperanca,” Baraf explained. The Interpol agent picked up a pair of thick noise-canceling headphones from Sawyer’s desk and held them out to Reid. “Please.”

  Reid fitted the headphones over his ears and immediately heard the shouts and demands of doctors issuing orders in Spanish. The boy thrashed on the video, coughing violently, his body racked with spasms.

  Then he heard something else, barely above a murmur yet still audible, coming from the boy on the bed. Reid wrinkled his brow. It sounded like a soft moan, a series of monosyllabic “mm” sounds.

  “Turn it up,” he asked Sawyer. The tech cranked up the volume to the point that it was nearly deafening. The audio quality of the security footage was poor and white noise screeched defiantly in his ears, but Reid could still just barely make out what the boy might have been saying.

  “Im…” he heard. “Im… Imam… ma…”

  Reid furrowed his brow. It sounded as if in his feverish delirium, the boy was murmuring “Imam”—he was calling out for his spiritual leader, perhaps the head of his mosque or a pillar of his community. He immediately understood why Baraf did not want the video leaked; anyone who heard the boy speaking Arabic would automatically assume the worst.

  Yet as he listened, there was something else, another word the boy was trying to get out. Reid could just barely distinguish a hard consonant sound as the boy attem
pted to say, “Ma… Ima… dee…”

  “Play it back,” he demanded. The English tech started the video over and Reid closed his eyes, focusing on the murmurs coming from the boy.

  Mahdi , Reid discerned. Imam Mahdi.

  His eyes widened in shock as the realization struck him. He yanked the headphones from his ears and pushed them into Barnard’s hands. He needed confirmation, or at the very least, a second opinion. “What does this sound like to you? What is the boy saying?”

  Barnard listened intently to the audio as Sawyer played it back, his narrowed eyes focused on nothing as he tried to make out the words. Then he too tore the headphones from his ears.

  “Did he say…?” The doctor did not seem to want to say it first.

  “Imam Mahdi,” Reid confirmed.

  “What does this mean?” Baraf asked.

  “It means we can assume the worst,” Reid said quietly. Countless wars had been fought in the name of religion, so Reid had educated himself fairly thoroughly on the major faiths of the world. He knew well what the Mahdi was—and what it meant.

  “In some Islamic sects, Imam Mahdi is a redeemer figure,” Barnard explained. “It is said he will be the last of the Muslim holy men, and he will bring about Judgment Day…”

  “The end of the world,” Reid finished. “The cleansing of the earth of sin.”

  Baraf blew out a breath. “We are dealing with Islamic militants.”

  “There’s little doubt,” Reid murmured. He thought back to Barnard’s remark on the plane. A virus is dispassionate. It does not target enemy soldiers or politicians or persons of interest. If this boy had been indoctrinated into an insurgent group, then he had indeed carried the virus willingly into the city… which meant that this was a jihad, plain and simple.

  “What do you think, Agent?” asked Barnard. “ISIS? Some Daesha faction?”

  “It’s not their MO,” Reid replied. The “usual suspects” of Islamic subversives tended to be very vocal about their attacks, stepping up to claim them and even going as far as filming it for the world to see. This felt different to Reid; quiet, covert, well-planned.