The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06]

by By Jon Land

  A fissure of dirt and wood burst up at her feet before she managed a shot, and Danielle spun to find a man steadying a hunting rifle on her from a raised perch in the loft above her. She fired at him fast, her first bullet missing, but her second taking the man in the leg and pitching him over the side.

  She heard but never saw him land, swinging back just in time to see Ben, hands tied behind his back, slam into a man she recognized as Hollis Buchert an instant before Buchert managed to steady his shotgun.

  Ben kicked his leg out and landed atop him. His wrists ached as he pummeled Buchert, his laced hands smashing into the leathery face now even with his.

  “Ben!” he heard Danielle scream just before a fresh hail of fire from the doorway forced him to spin off the People’s Brigade leader and roll for cover.

  Across the barn, Danielle clacked off single rounds toward the new gunmen as she rushed toward Ben.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she told him.

  “Buchert,” Ben gasped between labored breaths. “Where’s Buchert?”

  Danielle grabbed Ben by the sopping shirt and lifted him to his feet, pistol poised in her free hand. “I don’t know. We can’t worry about him now.”

  She sliced the rope binding Ben’s wrists with her knife and led him through a side door. Behind them they could hear a commotion as more People’s Brigade soldiers rushed the barn. Danielle tried to plot the best route back to the culvert, but any route in that direction would mean confronting the converging force head on. That left the Heydan Lake side of the compound, to the west, as their best option for escape, despite the stretches of open space with which they would have to contend.

  Danielle had started to lead Ben in that direction when the first of the helicopters appeared overhead.

  “Federal agents!” a voice hailed over an amplifier. “Drop your weapons!”

  Some of the People’s Brigade members began shooting up at the choppers, bullets dinging off their steel skin. The choppers fluttered into a rise while gunmen perched in the open cabin doorways returned fire. Danielle drew Ben away from the lingering sounds of the battle into the woods, which quickly gave way to thinner brush. She could hear the sound of water lapping at the lake’s edge, mixed oddly with the heavy whir of helicopters flitting over the compound.

  They stumbled over a rise and rushed toward the barbed-wire fence. Beyond that lay Heydan Lake, dotted with skiffs and small outboards to aid their flight. They reached the fence, and Danielle used the rest of her torn shirt to cushion their climb over the barbed wire.

  She had just dropped down after Ben when a burst of automatic fire stitched across a tree just over their heads. Danielle spun and saw the figure of Hollis Buchert a hundred yards back, firing an M-16 from the other side of the fence. An exposed root caught his foot and tripped him. He went flying, hit the ground hard, and struggled to find his feet again.

  His fall gave Ben and Danielle the time they needed to plunge into the frigid lake waters, swimming toward a small dock twenty-five yards north where a pair of small boats had been moored.

  Buchert’s fire chased the two of them as they struggled in the water toward the dock. When the firing stopped, Danielle looked back and saw a heavily armed troop of FBI agents converge on his position in the woods. She waited for the expected exchange of fire, but it still hadn’t come when she and Ben reached the dock and climbed into the nearest skiff.

  “Stay low!” Danielle told him, as she started the skiff’s engine and sped off across the lake.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 2

  Fort Detrick, Maryland

  T

  he shrill alarm echoed in Colonel Walter McClendon’s ears as personnel around him hurried to evacuate the USAMRIID building. He had switched his watch into stop mode at the alarm’s first sounding, satisfied with the progress of the evacuation thus far.

  “All personnel, we have a Red Flag contamination. Repeat, we have a Red Flag contamination. All personnel, evacuate. All personnel, evacuate.”

  The warning was repeated at thirty-second intervals, temporarily interrupting the deafening blare of the alarm. It was triggered automatically once the sensors picked up something amiss, and, along with the alarm, was designed to eliminate any possibility of human error or misjudgment.

  With good reason, McClendon thought.

  The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), housed on the sprawling 1,200-acre grounds of Maryland’s Fort Detrick, contained the largest stores of biological weapons in the United States military arsenal. Of course, they were no longer considered by most to be offensive weapons, the possibility that they would ever be utilized so remote as to be unthinkable. Instead, the reserves of anthrax, smallpox, botulism, plague, and other toxins were maintained as a hedge against the possibility they might be needed for future research.

  McClendon conducted drills like today’s to prepare the facility’s personnel for the unlikely scenario of a contamination event from either the 50,000-square-foot Biosafety Level 3 area or the 10,000 square feet taken up by the much more dangerous contagions stored in Level 4. Both these areas were located underground, accessible by only select personnel and easily sealed in the event of an accidental release.

  Colonel McClendon had been in charge of USAMRIID for almost fifteen years now, going back to the facility’s most shining moment, when its personnel rode to the rescue in nearby Reston, Virginia, and prevented a potential Ebola outbreak. Since security had been considerably increased since the September 11, 2001, attacks, McClendon’s own assessment had identified two threats to the facility and two threats only: an invading force from without and a contamination from within. Either scenario was compounded by the fact that Fort Detrick, which housed a number of nonmilitary departments employing civilian workers, was an open base.

  But USAMRIID had been cordoned off from the rest of the base and maintained its own light-armored force, a marine reserve unit, for security in the event of an attack from without. An attack from within called for rapid evacuation by all personnel and the immediate insertion of a specially trained Hazardous Materials team permanently outfitted three miles away. Three miles because McClendon had determined that distance to be the safe zone in the event the facility’s deadly contents were somehow unleashed.

  “All personnel, we have a Red Flag contamination. Repeat, we have a Red Flag contamination. All personnel, evacuate. All personnel, evacuate. “

  McClendon had tried both male and female warning voices, ultimately settling on the male when repeated drills showed it led to a faster response. The colonel slipped through a fire door amid the rush of personnel following procedure. As a precaution against unwarranted entry in the wake of such a drill, all facility personnel would have to show their identification badges before being granted access to the building again. That included McClendon.

  At USAMRIID, nothing was left to chance.

  McClendon emerged into the crisp air of Frederick, Maryland, and surveyed the tight clusters of people gathered outside the various buildings. Decontamination vehicles—converted motor homes, essentially, with specially built showers and containment shells—would already be en route, just minutes behind the HazMat crew.

  McClendon checked his watch again when the stainless-steel truck rolled onto the grounds. It had barely come to a halt before the holding line a hundred feet from the facility, when a half-dozen men wearing oxygenated isolation suits that shut out all air from the outside world burst from the rear. Their motions were mechanical, virtually robotic, they had been practiced so often. They hit the ground running, every movement synchronized, each man with a position and a role to play. McClendon watched them stream into the building and then reseal the doors behind them.

  Two minutes, fifty-five seconds . . .

  An all-time USAMRIID record, the colonel noted proudly. If this weren’t in fact a drill, at this moment the HazMat team would be isolating the area of contamination toward
determining the source and precise location. Since there were enough biotoxins stored inside to kill the world’s population many times over, the precautions and procedures were mandatory. In all its years of operation since 1972, though, USAMRIID had avoided any outside contamination. And during McClendon’s tenure the HazMat crew had been activated on merely three occasions and strictly as a precautionary measure.

  McClendon checked his watch again, prepared to give the all-clear signal to end the drill as soon as the HazMat team emerged from the building. Five minutes had passed since their entry now. The drill continued to run right on schedule. The colonel nodded to himself, satisfied.

  “Colonel McClendon, come in!” came the slightly harried voice of the base dispatcher, breaking radio silence over an unsecured band. “Colonel Mc—”

  “I hear you, son,” McClendon broke in. “This communication is not authorized. Please sign off.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve just had an emergency call from the State Police responding to a call at Station One,” the dispatcher said, referring to the offsite locale where the HazMat team was headquartered, just off Route 70 in Frederick. “They’re dead, sir. All of them.”

  “That’s impossible. They’re inside the building.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. They’re confirmed dead. I have the state police commander on the other line.”

  “Oh my God,” McClendon muttered, realizing at once what had happened, walkie-talkie at his lips in the next moment. “Seal the building! Repeat, seal the building! We have a breach. Repeat, we have a breach!”

  McClendon charged back inside with the first wave of marines, their mission changed from simply securing the perimeter to retaking the building from the invading force.

  “Seal all grounds!” he continued into his walkie-talkie. “Seal all grounds! No personnel in or out of Fort Detrick, civilian or military.”

  McClendon accompanied a specially selected commando team in the elevator down to Level 4, yanking his arms and legs awkwardly through an isolation suit grabbed from a closet on the way. He had barely gotten his helmet secured when the elevator hissed open, revealing a series of three airtight doors.

  All of them were still open.

  The six members of the commando team unshouldered their weapons and moved out into the hall, ventilators making their breathing sound wheezy and loud.

  “Hold your fire unless absolutely necessary,” McClendon ordered. The words resonated in his helmet as he struggled to hold a sidearm in his gloved hand.

  They passed a series of sealed laboratories, approaching the vaultlike entrance to USAMRIID’s primary Level 4 storage area.

  It, too, was still open, the red light aligned over the titanium steel flashing in bursts of blinding light to signal a breach. But the sensor lights below it still glowed green, indicating there had been no release of the deadly toxins stored within a chamber few even knew existed.

  “Clear!” the captain of the commando team shouted into the headset built into his helmet, after twisting into the vault.

  McClendon was the next one inside, his eyes darting instantly to the open storage holds that had been emptied of their contents. Trembling slightly, he backed into the hall and lifted the receiver from a digitless phone mounted on the wall. Then he yanked off his helmet and pressed the receiver against his ear.

  A brief ring was followed by a mechanical whine. The colonel cleared his throat.

  “McClendon. USAMRIID,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I’m reporting a Code Seventeen. Condition Red.”

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 3

  B

  en Kamal slid the leather identification wallet across his desk and watched the tall man rise slightly, bending forward to reach for it.

  “Now, Mr. Lewanthall,” he said when the man before him was again seated, “what exactly can Security Concepts do for the State Department?”

  Alan Lewanthall forced a smile, enough of one for Ben to see his teeth were brown along the edges. The smile of a man stealing away for as many cigarette puffs as he could manage between meetings in a nonsmoking world. “It’s not Security Concepts we’re interested in, Mr. Kamal,” the man from the State Department explained. “It’s you.”

  “My employer, Mr. Najarian, neglected to mention that.”

  “We both thought it best if he saved that task for me.” Lewanthall pried a paper clip free of his wallet and then returned the impressive ID to his jacket pocket. But he held on to the paper clip, working it between his thumbs. “Mr. Najarian has agreed to let us retain your services.”

  “The U.S. State Department wants to hire me?”

  “You’re an American citizen, aren’t you?”

  “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know the answer to that.”

  “Well, that’s the only real requirement these days. This kind of thing happens more frequently than people realize,” Lewanthall explained. “Budget cuts had slashed departmental pools of nonessential personnel long before 9/11. We often find ourselves in need of well-paid consultants. Contracting outside vendors has been standard procedure for five years now.”

  “I was out of the country for almost eight,” Ben said, but of course a man like Lewanthall would know that.

  “Serving as a detective with the Palestinian police in the West Bank, headquartered in Jericho.” The man from the State Department nodded, holding his paper clip briefly still. “I’ve read all about your many exploits in that part of the world. A most impressive resume, though no more impressive than your performance as a Detroit detective previous to your departure.” Lewanthall gazed about Ben’s twentieth-floor office in Boston’s International Trade Building, the East Coast headquarters of Security Concepts. Through his window the view was of an inlet that opened into the ocean, with the far ends of the Logan Airport runways clearly visible to the left. Planes coming and going to and from places he had no desire to see anymore. “I envy you the private sector.”

  “I think we’re still hiring,” Ben told him.

  “So are we,” Lewanthall said, and started to bend his paper clip apart in a futile effort to straighten it.

  “To do what exactly?”

  “Your brother is Sayeed Kamal, a professor at the University of Michigan.”

  Ben felt a rise of heat behind his cheeks. “If you’ve come here about—”

  “Please,” continued Lewanthall, “let me finish. I’m not here about your brother, although, I suppose, I could be.”

  “He was cleared of any wrongdoing eighteen months ago.”

  “That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to sponsor Palestinian immigrants in this country.”

  “Palestinian students,” Ben corrected. “And he hasn’t sponsored any new ones; he’s just fulfilling his obligation to those who are completing their undergraduate work at his university. He also finds homes in Dearborn for Palestinians orphaned by Israeli overreaction.”

  “It’s not an orphan we’re interested in, Mr. Kamal; it’s one of those your brother sponsored: Mohammed Latif.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know the name.

  “I wouldn’t expect you necessarily would. He’s on our watch list. And he’s disappeared.”

  “Then, I guess, you weren’t doing a very good job of watching him.”

  “Our assets are limited, especially in the Dearborn area, where Latif resided.”

  “And where I grew up.”

  “Latif has known ties to Akram Khalil, whom I’m sure you have heard of, a ranking member of Hamas.”

  “The ranking member now that Israel has eliminated all those above him.”

  “You know Khalil?” Lewanthall queried.

  “We met once. I investigated the murder of his daughter,” Ben said, not bothering to elaborate.

  “The Israelis believe Khalil is holed up in Gaza. The last batch of intelligence they sent us indicated he recruited Mohammed Latif personally for a cell here in the United States.”
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br />   “Probably for fund-raising purposes.”

  “We have reason to believe that Latif is involved in far more than that.”

  “Does this reason include any evidence?”

  Lewanthall got his paper clip as straight as he could and then set about twisting it back to its original form. “These days we don’t need either for an arrest.”

  “The Israelis call that administrative detention.”

  “And, apparently, they were right all along.”

  “If you believe that, you’ve come to the wrong man.”

  “I’ve come to a man who is the brother of Sayeed Kamal and who, I suspect, is very likely to want his brother kept out of this. His family too.”