Sleight of Hand (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

Joy gave Gunner an irritated look. “Is he aware that we’re aware of how to do our jobs?”

  “I blame lack of sleep,” Gunner said. He turned to Dozer, who was giving them both the evil eye, and asked, “How much sleep did you get?”

  Dozer shook his head and muttered, “This is all I need, a couple of comedians.” He got into his car, started the engine, but didn’t drive off.

  Gunner and Joy went into the back of their van, put on their ugly orange clean suits, and waved at Dozer to let him know they’d follow him.

  As they left the parking lot, Joy turned to Gunner and asked, “What was up between you and Dozer?”

  “He did a mental health check on me. Something I’m rapidly losing patience for.”

  Joy frowned. “He’s not going to be the only one.”

  “I don’t mind when a trained psychologist does it, that’s their job, but any armchair Freuds who try it today can go fuck themselves.”

  She snorted. “I say go for it. Anyone who knows you knows that’s normal for you. I’d worry if you were suddenly nice.” She glanced at him as he drove. “That’s all he did? A mental health check?”

  “We didn’t have time to slap each other with gauntlets,” he said, making an effort at the last moment to lessen the sarcasm in his voice. “Or decide on the details for our duel.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know him well enough for an opinion.”

  “Uh huh.” She most definitely didn’t believe him, but all she said was, “I heard he’s got a thing for Rodrigues.”

  “I thought she was married.”

  “No, her husband died a couple of years ago of lung cancer.”

  “Why do I need to know this?”

  “If Dozer’s mental health assessments get annoying,” she said, a smile in her voice, “do one on him.”

  That was a dreadful idea.

  He loved it. “Suddenly, I feel much better.”

  He drove the rest of the way to the storage facility humming a happy tune under his breath.

  Just as they arrived, pulling in behind Dozer’s SUV while he went in and served the attendant with the search warrant, Joy said quietly, “Last night, I made a mistake.”

  Her words triggered an ice age inside Gunner’s gut. Hadn’t they already talked about this? Unless…she’d decided she didn’t want the work and worry of a relationship. “I’m sorry you think so.” Sorry? Sorry? He’d been glad she came to him. He’d thought they both needed the physical safety of the team, but now… He had to force himself to look at her. “Don’t worry, I won’t bother you again.”

  “Bother? What?” she asked. “That’s not what I meant—”

  He cut her off with a gesture, a horizontal slice through the air. Dozer was walking toward them.

  Gunner rolled down the window. “Found it?”

  “Yep, follow me.” He headed for his vehicle.

  “Gunner, I think you misunderstood…”

  “Was your mistake leaving or staying with me as long as you did?” he demanded.

  When she flinched, he had his answer.

  She turned her body away, shutting him out, and that was a brutal kick to his gut.

  She was tougher than this. He’d seen her handle armed, angry men with grace and still be kind to anxious parents. He wanted to demand to know what was wrong with her.

  Their arrival at one end of a row of storage units forced him to put all of that aside. He’d figure out later what the fuck she was thinking, because something wasn’t right.

  They both got out of the van, grabbed their collection cases, and followed Dozer down the row of storage units. About halfway down, the agent stopped and punched in a code on the door lock. After a couple of seconds, he pulled his gun out of its shoulder holster, then he bent down in preparation of throwing up the overhead door to the unit.

  A horrible scent tickled Gunner’s nose. “Stop.”

  Dozer paused in a crouch. “What?”

  “Do you smell that?” Gunner asked.

  Dozer inhaled, let go of the door, and stepped back. “Rotting meat.”

  “Definitely something dead in there,” Joy said. “But there’s something else, too.”

  “What could be worse than a dead bod—” Dozer’s face twisted with disgust. “Shit.”

  So far, this whole day was shit. “We need to isolate this unit from the surrounding area before we open that door,” Gunner said. “We don’t know what’s inside. Could be an airborne pathogen.”

  “Who do we have to call in for that?” Dozer asked. “And how much time will it take?”

  “We’ve got everything we need to isolate the unit in the van,” Gunner said. He headed back to the van to get the supplies they’d need to seal it off from the rest of the world. At least the doorway, anyway.

  Joy answered Dozer’s questions, and was still trying to explain why E. coli didn’t become airborne in most cases when he returned.

  Gunner and Joy taped heavy-duty plastic around the doorway then over a collapsible rigid frame that provided a do it yourself airlock.

  Handing Dozer a standard surgical mask and a pair of gloves, Gunner donned his own mask and gloves then moved into position to open the door.

  Dozer stood to one side, his gun out, ready to fire if anything came at them from inside the unit.

  Not much chance of that. Something was very dead in there.

  Joy turned on a high-powered flashlight and aimed it at the door.

  Gunner turned the handle and lifted.

  The smell went from bad to horrible in an instant.

  “Take in air through your mouth, not your nose,” Joy told him. “You’ll get used to it eventually.”

  “Jesus Christ, why would anyone want to get used to it?” Dozer managed to gasp out, but in a few seconds he was able to stop coughing.

  As the door rolled slowly upward, Joy kept her flashlight on the opening as it grew larger and larger. Nothing appeared on the floor behind the door, but as more and more of the space was revealed, a puddle of some kind of slick, oily liquid reflected light back at them.

  An upright metal appliance surfaced out of the dark, followed by a counter, also metal. Below that…a body, face down.

  Joy’s flashlight paused on the body, and Gunner studied the corpse.

  “From what I can see, time of death was a few days ago at least,” he said. “But not more than a couple of weeks.”

  “How can you tell that from all the way over here?” Dozer asked.

  “Three years in Syria. After a building was bombed, it would sometimes take two or three weeks to reach the bodies buried under debris.” The images and scents of the dead, at varying states of decay, had been forever imprinted in his brain.

  “You helped in rescue efforts?” Dozer asked.

  “Sometimes helping to find even one person alive was a necessary and needed morale booster.” He glanced at Joy and nodded once to tell her she could continue the visual examination of the unit.

  She obliged, but there wasn’t much more to see. Next to the counter, in the corner, was a beer keg. The company label on it clearly visible: Frank Creek.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tuesday 10:43 a.m.

  Well, wasn’t this nice.

  Joy stared at the body and the beer and wanted to strangle Mike Creek all over again. She was confident the dead guy in the storage unit would be happy to help her. If he weren’t dead.

  “Is there a light switch?” Dozer asked.

  Gunner reached in and searched the wall. A moment later, light banished darkness from the small space.

  Dozer holstered his gun. “What is this? Some low budget evil villain lab?”

  “If it is,” Joy said as she put her flashlight away, “they didn’t know what they were doing.” She ventured inside far enough to look at the front of the large appliance. “I think this is an incubator.”

  Both men were staring at her.

  She was hyperventilating. Hardly
a moment had gone by when something else got draped over her shoulders, dragging her down into a deep, dark hole. Joy closed her eyes and focused on slowing down her breathing. When she was certain she could deal with the world again, she opened her eyes.

  Dozer looked around with exaggerated deliberateness. “What the fuck happened in here?”

  Joy sucked in a breath through her mouth and focused on her surroundings. Now that the lights were on, she could see that there were a number of petri dishes in the incubator with what looked like bacterial cultures growing on them. A small microscope sat on the counter along with an open notebook.

  Free America From Oppression was written in the margin, the words intertwined with pretty flowers. Flowers?

  Joy pressed her lips together, indignation burning off some of the panic pecking at her thinking processes. Her heart rate slowed as she found her mental footing again. Fucking flowers.

  “Looks like someone decided to play mad scientist,” Gunner said, looking at the beer keg. He glanced at the body. “And failed.”

  Joy pointed at the notebook. “FAFO.”

  “Yes,” Dozer said, picking up the notebook. “Finally.” He tucked the notebook into an interior pocket of his suit jacket.

  “Have we seen enough?” Joy asked. “I’d like to call this in.”

  Both men nodded, though they continued their visual examination of the space.

  She exited the unit and walked down the access way toward their vehicles. She disposed of her gloves, adding them to the contents of their biohazard container, then took out her phone and called Rodrigues.

  As she listened to Rodrigues telling her to look for evidence of what Mike Creek might have done with the contaminated beer, Joy noticed a man walking toward the unit from the opposite end of the access way.

  His street clothes told her he wasn’t law enforcement or CDC. He saw her, hesitated, and turned to look behind him. He wore a backpack. From the way it hung low and pulled at his shoulders, whatever was in it was heavy. He looked at her again, and even from this distance, she could see the fear on his face.

  A bitter taste filled her mouth, and her stomach twisted into a tight, terrified knot.

  “Suicide bomber,” she whispered to herself.

  “What?” Rodrigues asked. “Are you talking about the one who wore the fake vest yesterday?”

  “I think,” she said as she opened her protective coveralls to pull her gun out of the holster tucked into the small of her back, “there’s one walking toward the storage unit right now.”

  She crouched down and set her cell phone on the cement of the access way, Rodrigues yelling her name. Joy tucked her gun behind her leg as she strode toward the unit where Gunner and Dozer were still working and raised her left hand in a greeting.

  “Hi, good morning,” she said loudly. “Do you have a storage unit in this row, too?”

  All sound from the open unit ceased. Good, they’d picked up her warning.

  The approaching man didn’t say anything, didn’t slow down, didn’t react in any way.

  Only years of training kept her stride steady.

  “You might have noticed my protective coveralls,” she said, pointing at herself with her left hand. “I’m afraid there’s been a fatality, and this part of the storage yard is about to be cordoned off. You’ll have to return at a later time.”

  The man stopped about five feet from the open storage unit and reached with one hand for the strap of his backpack.

  Her right hand came up with her weapon. “Don’t move, sir. Stay where you are.”

  He hesitated, but a second later he continued to slowly shrug out of his backpack.

  “Stop,” she commanded.

  He set the backpack on the cement against the metal wall of the row of units. He turned, moving slowly, and took a step back in the direction he’d arrived from.

  Dozer appeared in the doorway of the storage unit, his gun in his hands. “Don’t move.”

  The man froze in profile, his chest rising and falling in an uneven, too-large rhythm that matched the shaking of his hands.

  Dozer pulled out a set of handcuffs and took a step toward him.

  The man made a high-pitched, terrified noise and broke into a run.

  Dozer chased after him.

  There was only one reason the owner of that backpack would cut and run. Doom wrapped icy hands around Joy’s throat, and she had to work hard to clear it, to voice the warning fighting to get out.

  “Gunner, bomb.” She sucked in another frantic breath and added more volume. “Bomb!”

  She ran toward the storage unit but had only taken a few steps when Gunner came out of it in a sprint. She had to put on the brakes, turn around, and run the other way. By that time, he’d caught up to her, grabbed her by the arm, and tugged her with him.

  They reached the end of the aisle and turned left to put metal walls between them and the bomb.

  Something loud and large turned gravity off, throwing them into the air for one long second. A moment later, gravity grabbed them and yanked them back to earth with punishing force.

  Joy’s chin struck the cement hard enough to snap her teeth together and rattle her brain. Her hands slammed into the concrete and skidded a few inches, leaving skin and blood behind. Her ears only registered endless white noise.

  As fast as the concussive sound and force arrived, it was gone, leaving a strangely empty silence in its wake.

  She struggled to draw air into her lungs and finally managed it after a couple of tries. Next to her, Gunner looked slightly confused, but without the usual irritation mixed in. He seemed to have trouble taking in air, too, but coughed after a couple of seconds then took in several deep breaths.

  They were alive. On the heels of that thought came another, less happy one.

  Dozer.

  She looked back, expecting to see the neat row of metal storage units. Not a well-ordered line now. The explosion had blasted through metal like it was the icing on a cake, depositing bits and pieces of the surrounding units and their contents in a large circle around them.

  Slivers of metal covered both Gunner and her, and a strange gray smoke rose from the ruins of the facility. It hovered in the air, carrying an acrid smell that irritated her nose so badly it refused any and all air. She was forced to breathe through her mouth and still found that acerbic scent so strong, her throat partially closed.

  Some kind of chemical?

  What the hell had been in that bomb? Or in the unit?

  She blinked.

  Where were Dozer and the bomber?

  Joy rolled to one side and, ignoring the pain from her abused palms, pushed up to her hands and her knees. After a moment, she rose to a standing position and looked out over the destruction.

  It wasn’t as bad as she first thought. The blast seemed mostly confined to the two rows of units that bordered the explosion. Closer to the epicenter of the detonation, however, units in the nearest rows had also been damaged.

  Still no sign of Dozer or the man who’d brought the bomb.

  She turned to ask Gunner for his thoughts on the lung-burning chemical in the air, but he was still on the ground. It took a moment for her to fully process the reason why.

  A large piece of metal had impaled itself in his left leg.

  He was frowning at his leg, like he wasn’t sure it was his.

  “Gunner?” she asked, trying to get his attention. “Gunner?”

  He looked up and finally focused on her face. “My cell phone is broken.” He sucked in a breath then coughed. When he spoke again, his voice sounded strained. Pain or the chemical? “I think I landed on it. Call for an ambulance, the bomb squad, and a biohazard team.”

  Right, EMS.

  Damn it, she’d left her phone on the ground. It took her a few seconds to find it underneath all the debris. The screen was cracked, but it worked. The connection between the phone and her boss had been severed at some point. She called Rodrigues back and told her what they neede
d while she ran to the van and pulled out the first aid kit and three particle masks. After promising she’d call back as soon as she had something new to report, Joy set the supplies down next to Gunner.

  He put on one of the masks. “Find Dozer,” he ordered, shooing her away as he opened the kit and took out a large bandage. “Go.”

  She slipped on her own mask, grabbed the last one, and went.

  It was difficult moving once she got to within twenty feet of the explosion. With so many scattered, jagged metal edges she had to place her feet carefully to avoid stabbing herself with something. The smell got worse and worse the closer she got, even through the mask. She advanced as quickly as she could.

  A foot, shoe still attached, became visible under the debris. A men’s black dress shoe.

  Dozer.

  If she started moving debris, flinging it any which way, she might make any injuries he had worse.

  She retreated to where the air was less contaminated by whatever chemical had fouled the atmosphere.

  “Dozer?” called Gunner.

  “He’s buried,” she replied, coughing. “I need a better mask. There’s some kind of chemical in the air that’s irritating my lungs.”

  “We’ve got charcoal filters in the van,” he told her.

  She found them in the container with the particle masks and quickly switched out the filters.

  The first police car reached the entrance of the storage facility. Until rescue personnel arrived with breathing equipment equal or better than what she had, they wouldn’t be any help in digging Dozer out.

  “How bad is your leg?” she shouted through the mask.

  “It went through the muscle. A few stitches and I’ll be fine.”

  She almost laughed. She’d heard that before from soldiers who later regretted the rush to get back into action.

  “I’ll handle the incoming EMS,” he continued. “Get Dozer out of there.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a snappy salute.

  He growled but didn’t otherwise respond.

  Funny how that growl made her feel better, like the world was working the way it should.

  She picked her way back to Dozer. After looking at the way he was covered from several different angles, she decided she could dig him out without knocking more stuff onto him. The wreckage on the top was a large tin wall panel. She cautiously lifted it, checked beneath to see how the wreckage below was piled up.