Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  “Save?” Celia managed to squeak.

  Captain Bricker nodded gravely. “Our intel is solid. The virus is on its way. The American way of life as you know it is about to end.”

  Celia’s stomach lurched, and her mind spun. Finally, she said, “My mother. Please.”

  He nodded again and patted her shoulder. “Of course. Tomorrow we’ll be running vaccination clinics, but you can get her on Sunday and bring her to the compound. I expect anyone who wishes to save themselves will be convening at the compound by Monday at the latest. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to explain the plan to our gathered brethren.”

  She nodded, mute and grateful, and stepped back to stand beside George and Lydia, who released each other’s hands and straightened to attention.

  Captain Bricker called for silence, and the din of laughter and conversation ceased immediately. It was as if someone had pressed a mute button. Forty-odd faces turned toward the leader, expectant and eager.

  With a solemn expression, he delivered the news, “Friends, thank you for gathering on such short notice. As some of you know, two weeks ago some disconcerting news came to my attention. Without going into details, I became convinced that the pandemic was imminent, and the government is ill-prepared to deal with it.”

  He paused and allowed a muted murmur to make its way around the room. To Celia, it sounded disapproving, but unsurprised. As if those assembled already knew this information.

  “Now,” he said, “let me forestall the obvious questions. Hasn’t the government contracted with a pharmaceutical company to stockpile an effective vaccine? Doesn’t that mean we’ll all be safe? The answers are that they have, indeed, and it means the exact opposite.”

  He squared his shoulders and jutted his chin forward and thundered, “Our government, ladies and gentlemen has bought all the available doses of the vaccine. All of them. That means when the day comes—and it’s coming soon—that the first American citizen is stricken with a flu unlike anything we’ve ever seen, you won’t be able to protect yourself. Stay inside and wash your hands, that’ll be the government’s advice to you.”

  “That’s right!” a voice from the crowd shouted.

  Several people nodded. A woman near the front raised her fist and shook it.

  Celia felt the outrage rising. The room grew close, hot.

  “What else can they do? They don’t have enough for everyone. So, they’ll decide whether they deem you worthy of protection or whether you’ll be left to suffer and die. Do you trust them to make the right choices?” Captain Bricker asked the crowd.

  “Noooo!”

  The call and response reminded Celia of church. To her left, Lydia was bouncing on the balls of her feet, raring to go.

  “No, indeed. Which is why I’m pleased to tell you that George Rollins, with the assistance of two members of the D Unit, has secured us our own supply of the vaccine,” Captain Bricker said.

  He spread his arms wide and raised his palms toward the roof. The room reacted with hoots and applause. George, red-faced and awkward, shuffled his feet and waved. Lydia ducked her head. And Celia felt frozen in place as all eyes turned her way.

  He continued, “So this evening, each of us will be vaccinated, and Nurse Markham will train us in administering the vaccine. Then, you need to return to your communities and reach out to your troops. Anyone who intends to weather the pandemic with us at the camp needs to be vaccinated, make final arrangements, and be ready to bug out ASAP. The vaccine takes seventy-two hours to reach full effectiveness, so you will each leave here tonight with a supply of doses sufficient to vaccinate your troop.”

  He paused and surveyed the room. “This is it, people.”

  His excitement bubbled to the surface for a moment, but he tamped it down so quickly Celia thought she imagined it.

  Lydia organized them into teams and presented a crash course in how to give vaccines. She demonstrated on George, who, in turn, gave Celia her shot. Celia vaccinated Captain Bricker with shaking hands, and he vaccinated the next person in line. On and on it went, one leader vaccinating the next. More than an hour passed in a blurred of alcohol swabs and syringes.

  It was nearly midnight when they finished, and when Celia trudged out to the icy parking lot, she wasn’t surprised to find that her car battery had died again.

  After a failed attempt to jump the car, Lydia grudgingly offered Celia her guest room.

  Now, Celia shifted in the bed and winced. The injection site where George had administered her vaccine was sore. She gently rubbed the spot, then she rolled onto her side and out of the bed, with its stiff plaid comforter and matching bed skirt.

  She moaned as her feet hit the floor. Her entire body ached. Lydia must have opted for the cheapest mattress available for her spare bedroom, she thought as she shuffled to the door and out to the kitchen.

  The ranch house was quiet, but Lydia had left a note propped up against a still-warm coffee pot. She plucked it from the counter.

  Celia,

  Make yourself at home. George will drop off your car with a new battery this afternoon. When my shift’s over, we’ll do a shot clinic for the unit.

  Lydia

  Celia yawned. She really needed to perk up. She poured a cup of coffee and helped herself to a muffin from the tray next to the coffee maker.

  She carried her breakfast into the living room and lowered herself onto the couch. She picked at the muffin with her fingers and considered calling her mom. She knew she should prepare her, warn her for what was about to happen, and give her time to pack and close up the house. But she was so tired. She’d just rest a while and call her later.

  She placed the mug on a coaster and sat the muffin beside it. Her eyes were closed before her head hit the couch’s backrest.

  She was still asleep when Lydia returned home four hours later.

  CHAPTER 10

  Leo sat at Naya’s desk, staring at the phone in his hands, swallowing the acid that rose in his throat, and focusing on not vomiting. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there like that, but he felt like he would never move. Judging by the growing darkness, the sun had set some time ago. Still, he sat.

  Then Sasha banged through the door, no doubt ready to bring him up to date on her search for Celia Gerig.

  He swung his head around to face her.

  “I just talked to Gavin—” she started, then stopped abruptly. “What’s wrong?”

  He imagined he looked the way he felt: Scared. It wasn’t an emotion he had a lot of experience with, but fear had seized him in a physical way. He was cold. Frozen.

  He looked up at Sasha and forced the words out. “It’s worse than we thought. It’s really, really bad.”

  She came to him immediately and placed a warm hand on his rigid arm. “Talk to me, Leo.”

  Sasha had just called him Leo. He must look bad. Even in the throes of pleasure, the woman called him Connelly.

  He swallowed. “I just got off the phone with a friend who’s assigned to Shield America.”

  She gave him a blank look.

  “It’s one of the ICE projects. Immigration and Customs Enforcement runs all the Homeland Security investigations, right?” he said, ignoring the quaver in his own voice.

  “Sure.” She nodded, encouraging him to go on.

  “So, there’s a bunch of task forces—drug trafficking, human smuggling, transnational gangs, money laundering. Shield America is part of the strategy to stop counter-proliferation. Basically, its charge is to prevent the export of components of weapons to our state enemies.”

  “Okay.”

  “Equipment that could be used to assemble weapons of mass destruction or agents that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons, in theory, would be stopped by Customs officials before ever making it to the Middle East or Asia, or wherever.”

  Leo could tell he was over-explaining, trying to put off the inevitable delivery of the news he’d learned.

  Sasha nodded again.
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  “They focus on the export side. And, while there are lots of tasks forces that would work to prevent the import of those materials, there’s no one project dedicated to it. I guess that’s why France called Shield America.”

  “France called?”

  Leo dropped his phone on the desk and took both of Sasha’s hands in his. The contact slowed his heart rate. He allowed himself a moment to just connect with her warm skin before he answered.

  “Yes, the French government wanted to alert Homeland Security about a situation, and they had a working relationship with Shield America.”

  “Is someone trying to export the vaccines?” Sasha asked, her eyes wide.

  “No. Someone’s trying to import the live virus.” The words stuck in his throat.

  “What live virus?”

  “The killer flu. A man named Michel Joubert, a French researcher on the Pasteur Institute team that mutated the virus, was murdered in a village in the Loire Valley.”

  Her eyes grew wider still at the mention of murder, and her hands tensed in his.

  Leo continued, “When the local authorities found his body, they contacted the Pasteur Institute. The news threw the institution into an uproar, and they quickly discovered the Doomsday virus was missing. The working theory is this researcher sold the virus to person or persons unknown. After the purchaser had the virus in hand, he or they dispatched someone to kill Joubert.”

  Leo felt her hands go cold. He rubbed them in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

  The room was silent, save for the soft ticking of Naya’s wall clock and their breathing.

  “And the French authorities think the virus is on its way here, to the United States?” Sasha finally asked.

  “Yes. Actually, they suspect it’s probably already within the borders. Joubert’s body was found early this morning, but he’d been dead for several hours—possibly a day. Joubert signed into the building very late Friday evening, his time and didn’t stay long. So, the time line goes like this: assuming he was involved, on Friday, he stole the virus and handed it off to the purchaser—”

  She interrupted him. “Why do they think he sold it?”

  “There was a large wire transfer into his account from an off-shore bank on Saturday morning. It fits the theory.”

  “Okay, sorry I interrupted. Go on.”

  “No, stop me if you need to,” Leo said.

  Laying it all out for her, step by step, was enabling him to step back from the crisis and view it analytically. It was helping to loosen the fear that gripped him.

  He went on, “After the money hit Joubert’s account, he stopped at a bank machine and withdrew his daily limit. He did the same thing again, a few hours later. Judging by the locations of the banks, he was making his way to the Loire Valley, where his family has an old farmhouse they use for getaways. Apparently, he was going to hole up there. A neighbor reports seeing him in the village market Saturday afternoon buying groceries. That evening, he was found stabbed to death in the home by a friend who’d heard he was in the village and stopped by for a glass of wine.”

  “But, Homeland Security thinks the virus is already here?”

  Leo realized it likely wasn’t appropriate to pull one’s outside counsel onto one’s lap while discussing a possible national crisis, but he did it anyway. He noted that she didn’t resist.

  “It’s just a theory. But, the theft and the murder were both well-planned and organized. The smart way to do it, if you were going to steal the virus and then kill the only person who could link you to the theft would be to get the virus out of the country immediately and then have a second, unrelated person kill Joubert. A cleaner. The CIA has a team on the ground now, combing through the Pasteur Institute and the Marshal’s Office is pulling all the flight manifests that left France today to look for anyone that pops out as even remotely suspicious. The French authorities are working the murder scene. The first priority, of course, it to determine if the virus is stateside and to find it. Given the time difference, the scene is already cold. Don’t forget, it’s already Sunday there.”

  Sasha nodded. It was very early Sunday morning in France, but Connelly was right: time was not on their side.

  “Just out of curiosity, assuming this theory’s correct, what’s the going rate for stealing a deadly virus?”

  “The equivalent of four million U.S. dollars was transferred into Joubert’s account,” Leo said.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, oh.”

  Sasha twisted around and pressed her hands against his chest. She searched his face then said, “I don’t understand how this all fits together, but it can’t possibly be a coincidence that you’re missing vaccines.”

  Leo nodded. “I know. I called Tate and told him to schedule a videoconference board meeting for this afternoon. He complained about it, but I told him he’s just going to have come in from the slopes for half an hour.”

  Sasha bit down on her lip for a moment before asking her next question. Leo steeled himself, knowing what it would be.

  “What’s our worst case scenario? If the virus is here and it gets released, how bad is it going to be?” she asked.

  Really bad, Leo thought. During his years at the Department of Homeland Security, he’d participated in more national security disaster war game scenarios than he could count: terrorists taking hostages; unhinged militia groups storming the Federal Reserve; jihadists seizing control of nuclear power plants; the list went on. The scenarios that had worried him the most were the natural disasters—hurricanes, meteor strikes, and, most worrisome of all to him was the pandemic. A government could stop a madman, or a dozen madmen, but one vial of death slipped into a pocket and released on a New York subway car would have unstoppable consequences that rippled across the country and, eventually, the globe. In addition to the painful deaths those who were infected would suffer (which he could now imagine in Technicolor detail, thanks to his time working at Serumceutical), the infrastructure would break down quickly. The rule of thumb was that it could take up to seventy-two hours for the government to respond to an affected area. But in three days, the public would be hit with food and medicine shortages, followed by rioting and looting, freeways clogged with desperate residents fleeing urban areas, overcrowded hospitals, emptied banks, corpses stacked like firewood on the roadside—the list of horribles was virtually endless. And, human nature being what it was, Leo expected the citizenry to turn on one another in a violent struggle pitting the strong against the weak, the wealthy against the poor.

  “Worse than you can imagine. End of the world bad,” he said.

  Sasha was silent. Her green eyes narrowed as she considered the implications of what he’d said. Then she straightened herself, squared her narrow shoulders, and nodded. As if she’d imagined the end of the world and was now ready to move on to prevent it.

  “So, what’s our first step?” she asked. Her voice was clear and firm, without a hint of fear or hesitation.

  “Well, the first step is to get the board up to speed and see what Tate wants to do. Then tomorrow, you and I should head to D.C. and try to set up a meeting with the task force for Monday.”

  “There’s a task force?”

  A chuckle surprised Leo by bubbling up from his throat in the midst of his dread. “There’s always a task force, Sasha.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Colton did not appreciate being kept waiting. Not by a pretend military officer, not by anyone. He checked the time and stifled a sigh. It would be a weakness to show his irritation, so he merely returned to his book.

  The bartender must have sensed his impatience, though, because he came over and swabbed the scarred bar in front of Colton with a filthy rag. Without looking up, he said in a low voice, “The captain’s on his way, sir. It shouldn’t be long now. Can I get you a refill?”

  Colton marked his page with a finger and declined the offer of a second glass of watered-down no-name whiskey.

  “I’m fine,” he said with a
tight smile.

  The bartender nodded and returned to staring vacantly at the football game on the television screen mounted above the bar.

  Colton tuned out his surroundings and focused on Steve Jobs’ biography. He believed he could learn something from any successful leader, although he had yet to find anything in Jobs’ story that was new to him.

  The door swung open and a tall man with a crew-cut bustled in, bringing a burst of cold air with him. Colton would have pegged the man for Bricker based on how he carried himself, but the bartender’s posture confirmed it: he went from slouching against the bar to ramrod straight in a flash.

  “Sir,” the bartender said to Bricker.

  Bricker favored him with a flash of white teeth. “Charlie.”

  The bartender inclined his head toward Colton, as if Bricker couldn’t figure it out himself. Colton wondered which of the flannel-shirted roughnecks trading oil rigging stories over bottles of beer the bartender thought Bricker might mistake for the CEO of a publicly traded, international pharmaceutical corporation.

  Colton closed his book and stood, folding his tan cashmere overcoat with precision over his left arm. He approached Bricker and extended his right hand.

  “Captain Bricker?” he said, managing to keep the sarcasm out of his voice while he used the ridiculous military honorific.

  Bricker pumped his hand with a too-firm grip. Typical.

  “Mr. Maxwell. It’s a pleasure.”

  Bricker caught the bartender’s eye. “Is the back room free, Charlie?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bricker gestured with his hand for Colton to follow him along the length of the dimly lit, narrow barroom. Colton observed that The Hole in the Wall was an apt name for the establishment. At the far end of the room, a windowless, steel door was set in the wall next to a door that appeared to lead to the john.

  Bricker opened the steel door and flipped a light switch on the wall. He ushered Colton inside as the fluorescent bar overhead buzzed and blinked to life.