“Did she say anything before she went into the zone?” Quirk asked.
He had to peel his eyes away from the screen. The colors and movement were hypnotizing even him. However, he had no idea whatsoever what it all meant.
“Yeah. Ronnie said she’d be back in three hours.”
Quirk rose, dusting off his hands. “Well, then. There you have it.”
“Have what?” Zach really did not like the sensation of being behind the curve. And with these two? He had a feeling that he had better get used to it.
“She estimated that it would take her three hours to break the cipher.”
“What?” Zach challenged. “I thought it was an unbreakable code that has stood up for thousands of years.”
Quirk shrugged. “Only because Ronnie hasn’t put her mind to it.”
The assistant went back to his task. Zach studied Ronnie. She didn’t look at peace. Nor did she seem stressed. She just seemed intent. Zach knew that she was smart. Obviously. And cunning. No one got on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list by accident. But to see that intellect in action?
It truly was a sight to behold.
CHAPTER 17
Plum Island
1:05 p.m., EST
Amanda turned away from the conference room’s television screen. As if she needed to hear Anderson give more bad news. Such as, now every large urban city across America had to shut down their hospitals and go to the “Antibiotic Home Delivery” system.
Antibiotics weren’t going to cut it, though. Not with Jennifer sitting next to her hacking away. None of the treatments seemed to slow the course of the plague at all. If anything, they just seemed to piss off Yersinia pestis.
No, they needed to concentrate on finding the vaccinated populations.
At this point in the conference room, it was pretty much just Jennifer and Amanda. The last of the scientists had gone down for treatment. It was eerie how still the upper floor was after the hustle, bustle, and coughing from the infirmary.
“Anything yet?” Dr. Henderson asked as he walked in. Guess he followed their lead to get the hell out of the infirmary. The director rolled his sleeve down to cover not only the bandage where the IV catheter was, but several boils were about to rupture.
Amanda shook her head. “No. it could take days to compile all the information.”
The director didn’t respond. He didn’t need to. They all knew that they didn’t have several days. If they didn’t find a vaccine within the next twenty-four hours…
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Devlin said bursting into the room.
Trying to play it cool, Amanda shrugged.
The CIA liaison turned to Dr. Henderson. “I’m sorry, but I have to speak to you regarding Dr. Rolph’s conduct.”
Henderson slouched into the nearest chair. “It is a free country, Mr. Devlin.”
Devlin glared at Amanda. “I would like to know why my broadband width has been hijacked by Dr. Rolph.”
“I am not sure if you are aware, Mr. Devlin, but we do have a plague going on.”
“Yes,” Devlin stated, flinging his hand as if he could just brush that minor inconvenience away. “I mean, why is she tapped into the CIA database?”
Henderson swung his head toward her. “That seems to be a fair question, Dr. Rolph.”
Amanda’s eyes darted to Jennifer. She’d asked her assistant to get her more bandwidth. Guess she should have asked Jennifer where she planned on getting it.
“I’m drilling down into the data to pick up subtle variations in the spread of the disease to extrapolate the predictive model for vaccinated populations.”
Devlin sneered. “Through Yahoo and purchase histories on Amazon?”
“Well, Dr. Rolph?” The Director’s eyebrow shot up. “That data does seem slightly broader than I gave you permission for.”
“Permission?” Devlin spat out. “She’s committed felony espionage.”
An elbow poked Amanda in the back. Damn Jennifer.
“I…I…” Amanda said, still not sure how she was going to explain it. How far she had come. A day ago she would have stammered for ten minutes. Two days ago, she would have just run from the room. Now? Now she would rather ask forgiveness than permission. “I need the data.”
“Jesus, give it up,” Devlin snapped. “The CIA is all over this.”
Henderson rose. “You mean like the CIA withholding vital information regarding the spread of the plague to America within twelve hours? The theory that if we possibly hadn’t ignored could have saved millions upon millions of lives.”” Devlin opened his mouth to argue but Henderson overrode him. “At this point, Amanda gets to follow just about any hunch she wants.”
With that the large man hefted himself from the chair.
“Thank you, sir,” Amanda responded.
As he walked past, he nodded. “You are welcome. Although it is I who should be thankful that we have a Chicken Little in-house.”
Amanda wasn’t quite sure if that was much of a compliment. As soon as Henderson was out of earshot, Devlin turned on her.
“Don’t get too comfy in your role of teacher’s pet,” he hissed. “My director will be weighing in.”
Politics. It was like being in grade school all over again. Yet, she liked how brave she felt standing up to Devlin. He truly did inspire her to be a stronger person. “Yes, well, given that we are in the worst pandemic the world has ever known, I’m pretty sure that my director can beat up your director.”
Jennifer snorted behind her.
She met Devlin’s angry gaze. “Are we done here?”
The man stormed out. Amanda guessed that was his answer. She turned to her assistant, who wore a look about as proud as Amanda felt.
“So now that we don’t have to be on the down low, let’s really start digging into non-affected population movements.”
* * *
Quirk really didn’t like working in the field. Like, an actual field. With a herd of goats that had decided to see what all the fuss was about. As if it weren’t hard enough to try to throw together a sat phone after three quarters of your stuff got toasty-fried in a crash, you had to keep the various components away from a nanny goat.
A ding brought him back to his phone. The text read, I wouldn’t recommend getting the plague. No fun. Just FYI.
Quirk texted back, trying to keep anxiety from reaching his words. “Oh, please. You’ll say anything to get out of work.”
The next time I see you, I’ll be sure to cough on you.
Oh, Jennifer knew how to get back at him. She knew even the thought of such a travesty would make the hairs on his neck stand on end. Luckily, he knew how to get right back at her. Like he was going to let the fact that she was plague stricken stop him from winning this little exchange.
And I will remind you of your last attempt to get rid of that pesky cellulitis on your thighs.
No response. Had he been too cruel? But come on, trying to smear cottage cheese, real cottage cheese, on your legs to make your own cottage cheese go away? Quirk knew the advice had come from a glossy women’s magazine, but come on.
He was about to text when Jennifer’s response came through. Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.
Quirk ran his thumb over the screen. To have a friend in such pain…
“Looks like somebody is coming,” the FBI agent said, as he gazed through the high- definition binoculars that only had one lens working.
Scanning the horizon, Quirk couldn’t see anything. “Perhaps it’s a mirage.”
Heat drifted up in waves as the late-afternoon sun beat down upon them.
“Nope,” Zach answered. “I’m pretty damned sure that is a truck’s exhaust.”
Quickly Quirk typed, Get rest. I will teach you to dare to exchange barbs with a gay man later.
Closing the window, Quirk looked out over the rolling hills and, as Zach indicated, there appeared to be a vehicle approaching. Yet, that couldn’t be. Quirk was still waiting for the sate
llite that they hadn’t knocked out to come into position. The FBI agent rose and handed him the scope. It was the first time in hours that the man had moved away from Ronnie’s side. Quirk could sympathize, though. He too, used to stand vigil over her— until he realized that is was just plain boring to sit around and watch a chick type really fast. Zach would learn.
Quirk took the binoculars and squinted one eye. Sure enough, an old, beat-up pickup hauled ass in their direction. Maybe it was just a farmer looking for his goats.
But wait. Was that a pair of sooty long johns that Quirk spotted?
“He is drawn to me,” Quirk said as he handed the binoculars back.
Zach took them back. “Yes, but is that a sawed-off shotgun on the rack?”
Even if it was, Quirk knew that the pilot would never use it. Their bond was far too strong.
Within moments, Quirk didn’t need any sight aid. The truck came into clear view. How his heart went aflutter as the burly man barreled toward them. Quirk began shooing away the goats and gathering his equipment. His knight in shining armor had arrived.
Zach, on the other hand, stood in front of Ronnie, scowling at the approaching vehicle as if his searing glare alone could protect her. Guess all those meds had kicked in. The FBI agent only looked beaten up, rather than done for.
The truck bounced and jostled over the rough terrain, yet the pilot sat ever-so-cool in the front seat. Quirk was so ready by the time the truck skidded to a halt in front of them. “Hi, there.”
“Get in.”
God, how Quirk liked a man of action.
Zach eyed the shotgun. “Look, buddy, we don’t want any—”
“I’m taking you as far as an ATM at the border so you can put some kind of down payment on building back my bird,” the pilot grumbled in his gravelly voice. “After that, you can worry.”
“Told ya!” Quirk said just to rub it in. “Help me load up.”
But the FBI agent turned to Ronnie, who still had that “I’ve left this realm” look about her. But who cared? That meant that Quirk got to jump in and ride next to the pilot.
Like he said. His day was looking up.
* * *
Ronnie could hear sounds, but her brain simply ignored them, shunting those electrical impulses away. They had no place here. The only items her brain chose to let through the filter of her mind’s eye were the symbols. They blazed before her, brilliant in their glory, fierce in protecting their secrets. She could swear that they were so deeply etched in the back of her retinas that they felt a part of her.
Each red corpuscle coursing through her veins was afire with the symbols—nearly carrying as much oxygen as her blood. They tumbled and sped, taunting her. Teasing her. Luring her deeper and deeper into their game. They were like putty in her hands—only the putty refused to create the masterpiece she envisioned.
For all their familiarity, they were still an inch out of reach. Kind of like how she would stare so hard at Zach’s image, straining to make him come alive in her world.
Zach.
The voice. Was it Zach?
She could feel the tug toward the world she had left behind. Yet how could she leave the swarming symbols without understanding their secrets?
Her body shook, and then shook again, knocking her fingers from the keyboard.
“Ronnie,” a voice called. A deep voice. A man’s voice. Zach’s voice?
Roused by the baritone, she let the symbols slip away. Like bright, beautiful sand through her fingers, the code slid through, leaving no trace that it had been there before.
She blinked several times to clear the screenshot she had in her mind.
Where was she? A dry valley lay before her. The sun was about to set, so it must be dusk. Why did her butt hurt so badly? And why, exactly, was a goat nibbling at the hem of her shirt? But the most glorious of all wonders was the fact that Zach knelt in front of her. Not a picture of Zach, but the actual man.
Ronnie smiled. The land of gilded symbols was beautiful, but this was even better.
“Ronnie, we’ve got to go,” Zach said, urging her up.
Then the haze of decrypting evaporated as pain shot up her legs. She really needed to stick to ergonomic chairs with vibro-massage.
Zach helped her to rise, and then scooped up her laptop without her even asking. He guided them to the dustiest pickup in the history of pickups. Quirk was already seated with a smile that outshone the setting sun. Which meant, of course, that just to the left of him sat the pilot.
How he got back to them, Ronnie didn’t know, but even she was glad to see that he had a new cigar to chew on.
“Did you break the code?” Quirk asked, scooting over to make room for her.
“As far as I can,” Ronnie answered, turning to Zach, who loaded up last. “I need to see those symbols on the arsonist’s arm.”
“Well, then I guess we need to head to El Paso.”
Ronnie nodded, and then regretted it. The post-cyber-vortex headache was settling in. Much more measured, she nodded to the pilot, who was now their driver. “El Paso it is.”
* * *
Amanda let the numbers scroll by. On one hand, it was scary to see how much data the CIA collected on American citizens. And since the plague broke out? They were tracking everything that everyone was doing. They had even hacked into the Nielsen ratings, keeping track of what people were watching on television.
On the other hand, Amanda was grateful. It provided her with a wealth of information. Almost too much information. She had zeroed in on any household or complex that was not showing extreme stress regarding the plague. Even better yet, dwellings without television. The Hidden Hand seemed like an organization that would be primetime-averse.
Still, she struggled to isolate populations. Nothing she found edged into the statistically relevant category. Amanda looked at Jennifer, but her assistant shook her head. Apparently, she was having no better luck.
So far, their calculations had been based on a stringent theorem. Take, for instance, the fact that they only counted a single occurrence of apparent resistance—even if an entire family seemed immune. The theorem stipulated that if one person in the family had resistance to the plague, the rest of the family was highly likely to as well.
However, didn’t that apply to the Hidden Hand as well? Wouldn’t they have vaccinated clusters of families, or members of the rank and file?
“What if we counted each resistant case as its own nidus?” Amanda asked Jennifer. Her assistant’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. Her fingers rushed over the keyboard.
A new set of parameters came up. With many more islands.
Now to just figure out which was the Hidden Hand.
CHAPTER 18
El Paso FBI Field Office
8:32 p.m., MST
Zach lay belly-down on the roof, peering through a set of binoculars to the building he used to call his work—the El Paso FBI Field Office. Now he was surveilling it for what amounted to a jailbreak. However, Ronnie couldn’t get any further with the decoding unless they had Francois, and Zach didn’t think that the FBI was just going to hand the old guy over to them.
Still, it gave him pause to think of the number of laws he was about to break. Infinite numbers of laws. His indictment would read like a laundry list of class one felonies, and even treason. The only silver lining in this entire screwed-up scenario was Ronnie lying next to him. Of course, he wished it were under completely different circumstances, but just having her chest rising and falling next to his felt right. As a decorated FBI agent, it shouldn’t, but it did.
“Looks like about twelve agents, plus another seven support staff,” Ronnie said as she swung the binoculars down. Their eyes met. She studied his features. Her mind seemed to work like a micro-expression computer. “You still okay with this?”
“No,” he answered honestly.
It was one thing to get caught up in the moment after a helicopter crash. He was all full of adrenaline and fury. But now? In the co
ol of the El Paso night? Considering an armed assault on his colleagues?
Again, she seemed to read him perfectly. “Quirk’s going to do everything he can to neutralize the people in there. We should be able to get in and grab Francois without a shot being fired.”
The “should” in that sentence was the one that worried him. If Ronnie were so damned sure that they wouldn’t need to fire a shot, she probably wouldn’t have had them haul enough armaments to lay siege to Fort Knox up five flights of stairs. The remains of Ronnie and Quirk’s equipment were scavenged from the helicopter. Half of the stuff he didn’t even recognize as weapons, like the large metal disc that supposedly could alter a bullet’s course—or even pull a gun from an assailant’s hand.
However, if Ronnie thought she was going to need all of this, then that told Zach just how deadly these items are. Jorge’s expression as those iPod earbuds’ directional charge blew his brains out would never fade.
Ronnie laid a hand on his arm. Zach was sure that she meant it to be comforting, but it only reinforced how worried she was.
“They’ve declared you rouge, Zach. They have shoot-on-sight permission.”
Ronnie was right, of course. Quirk had intercepted the communiqués from Mexico to Quantico. There was no coming back from this. No matter that it was Grant who kidnapped and tortured him. The official story had the facts flipped. The entire twenty-four hours had gone sideways—seriously sideways. Too sideways to ever recover his career.
He was an outlaw. Plain and simple.
His mom was going to be so proud. Like Thanksgiving dinners hadn’t been awkward enough. Now he might never get to eat overcooked turkey and barely defrosted green beans. Damn it, but he had to choke back tears.
Unfortunately the well-coiffed hacker sitting next to him had no problems with weeping softly as he typed. Quirk’s distress at having to leave “The One,” their pilot and grudging chauffeur, at the border was still evident in every sigh and sniffle.
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