“We’ve got to contact the pilot,” Ronnie said.
Quirk rolled his eyes as their chopper floated up between the buildings and flew straight toward them.
* * *
Zach would never again doubt the pilot’s devotion to Quirk. They seemed to have a connection that did, in fact, defy the time and space continuum. Zach wedged a chair under the roof’s doorknob, knowing it would not hold long, but perhaps long enough for all of them to get on the chopper.
The pilot expertly hovered the helicopter only inches off the roof as Ronnie helped Francois into the chopper. Quirk was next, and Zach joined them. Ronnie was only halfway in when the roof door burst open.
“Stop!”
So that’s what it sounded like to be on the other end of a law enforcement proclamation. Zach hoped he didn’t sound quite so nervous. As shots whizzed by, Zach pulled his weapon. Even shooting cover fire could accidently injure a poor cop who was just trying to do his job. Who had risked his life just by stepping out onto the plague- filled streets. Zach couldn’t risk one of these bullets hitting the chopper, though.
As chairs blew across the open-air café in the wake of the chopper’s rotors, Zach had a way better idea. “Land the chopper!”
The pilot shook his head. “No can do.”
“The roof can’t support the weight,” Ronnie added.
“Exactly.”
Ronnie must have caught on to Zach’s plan O as she turned to the pilot. “Put her down!”
“Your dime,” the pilot grumbled as he lowed the chopper onto the roof.
Within moments, telltale cracks formed under the helicopter’s struts. With a tight grin, the pilot tilted the chopper just a bit forward, forcing their weight onto the tip of the struts. Cracks became crevices, which became full-on fracture lines. The cement broke apart as the underlying wooden beams cracked under the weight. Soon, the entire roof listed, forcing the cops to flock back to the stairwell.
Zach hopped in the chopper as it took off, just as the roof collapsed inward. Below them, Zach could see the interior to the previously resplendent American Wing. Now it looked like a bombed-out shelter.
Yeah. He was never getting invited to Thanksgiving ever again.
CHAPTER 27
Skies over New York
11:56 a.m., EST
Ronnie studied the new symbols. They had gathered so much information at the Met that it actually caused her to have a headache. Were there too many symbols, or too few? With each new symbol came a hundred variables. Where each one fit in the intricate sequence that was angelic script, still a mystery.
However, it was becoming clearer and clearer that these most recent symbols were actual longitudes and latitudes.
The problem? Too damn many of them. Even if she ignored the sites outside the United States, there had to be at least a dozen scattered across North America. And just because there was a dot on a map, that did not mean that a facility was there that stored vaccine.
Would the Hidden Hand have antiserum at each location, or would they control access to their greatest asset and hide it at just one of them?
With half an ear, Ronnie heard the pilot ask where they should head.
“I think we just need to get out of the city,” Zach replied.
Ronnie could already feel the tug of the symbols. Her inner world wanted to consume her entire attention. But not yet. Her fingers flew across her keyboard, and a new set of coordinates appeared on the pilot’s dashboard.
“If that’s where the lady wants to go…”
The helicopter leaned left as it banked northeast. Zach raised an eyebrow.
“You’ll see,” she smiled. Ronnie waited for her assistant to pounce on that statement, fracturing the little moment between she and Zach. Wait. What was Quirk doing?
She looked at the back of the chopper. The back, mind you. Not the copilot’s seat. Not in the jump seat that had an excellent view of the pilot’s profile. For goodness’ sake, Francois was sitting closer to the pilot than her assistant. Instead, Quirk sat on the floor of the helicopter—turned away from the rest of them.
Even though the symbols called to her like sirens of gold, Ronnie rose and made her way to the back of the chopper.
“Quirk, what’s up?”
He looked up, tears glistening in his eyes. And not his usual self-pity tears, but real tears.
“What’s wrong?”
He tried to shake it off. “Nothing.”
Ronnie sat next to him. Quirk tilted his phone to her. “Jennifer…”
“Your contact at the CDC?”
Quirk sniffled once. “Yeah. She’s in the late stages of the plague.”
Ronnie squinted to read the texts upside down. That made no sense. The plague normally took four days to reach fatality.
“But isn’t that way early?”
He nodded. “That’s part of the weaponization. The Hidden Hand found a way to accelerate the plague’s course.”
Ronnie felt first her throat, then her chest, and then her heart tighten. She thought they had at least another day to find the vaccine. Now they had mere hours?
Quirk looked up, eyes rimmed in red. “Can I tell her anything? Give her any hope?”
Hope? Ronnie just about choked. Since when was she the font of hope? How could she disappoint Quirk, who looked like a puppy that had been kicked and then told Santa didn’t exist?
“I’m sure the symbols will help us pinpoint a vaccine repository on the Eastern Seaboard.”
Okay, maybe sure wasn’t the exact word she would use or even pinpoint or precisely on the Eastern Seaboard, but Quirk’s fingers flew across the tiny keyboard.
Now Ronnie just had to figure out how to fulfill her words.
* * *
Amanda glanced up from her computer to the abnormally still conference room. Without Anderson’s voice in the background the place felt like a morgue.
Devlin was still missing, and even Henderson had left to find some potable water. Amanda turned to Jennifer—only the woman was gone. How in the hell had Jennifer gone anywhere? Her assistant was too sick to get very far at all. Amanda’s head ached as she rose too quickly. Steadying herself on the table, she let the dizziness and nausea wash over her. The pressure on her neck from her lymph nodes forced her to swallow hard to get her saliva down her throat. Those poor lymph nodes had tried so in vain to stop the bacteria’s spread to her bloodstream.
However, the beds of her nails had a distinct blue tint to them. None too soon, they would blacken as the bacteria destroyed her blood vessels. Sometimes it really was better to be naïve. Every hour, she could feel the plague advancing in her body. She knew each insidious step the bacteria would take to overwhelm her immune system—and ultimately choke the life from her.
A faint clicking caught her attention. She followed the sound to find Jennifer curled under a desk. A sweatshirt was rolled up under her head as a pillow.
“Jennifer?” Amanda asked as she dropped to her knees. “What are you doing?”
As the woman typed on a tiny keyboard, it became obvious. She was texting.
“We’ve got to find you a bed,” Amanda said, taking the phone from Jennifer’s swollen hand.
Her assistant’s chest heaved up and down, trying to breathe against the fluid building up in her lungs. Still, Jennifer used up some of her precious strength to press the phone into Amanda’s hand.
What could be so important in a text?
Amanda scanned the messages, mainly to keep Jennifer calm, but then stopped when she saw the word “vaccine.” Scrolling back, Amanda realized that her assistant had been in communication from someone other than the CDC. That wasn’t just against protocol or espionage. It was downright treason.
Then she realized that it hadn’t been Jennifer talking about the vaccine, but the other person stating they were en route to retrieve the vaccine.
“Who is this?” Amanda typed.
The response on the screen, “Um. Who are you to ask me who I
am?”
Now was not the time to play semantics. “What do you know of the vaccine?”
There was a delay, so Amanda typed, “Jennifer is too ill to text. This is her boss, Dr. Amanda Rolph.”
Still, no response.
Who knew who was on the other end of this connection? Was it the people who had spread the plague, or could there really be another faction out there fighting the Black Death as hard as she was?
In the end, Amanda realized that if Jennifer trusted them, then she needed to as well.
“I might be able to help you find the vaccine.”
* * *
Quirk straightened up. “Ronnie, look at this!”
As she scanned the text, his boss’ eyes narrowed. “How well do you know Jennifer?”
“She’s my CDC BFF. If there’s an outbreak, she lets me know.” Ronnie didn’t seem to understand quite how close that made them. “Remember how we avoided that cholera outbreak in Micronesia last year?”
“Vaguely.”
“It was Jen who alerted me, way before the official alert went out. She’s solid.”
Still, Ronnie frowned. “But her boss? Can we be sure she isn’t Hidden Hand?”
Quirk typed rapidly. “Are you part of the Hidden Hand?”
“Not exactly what I meant,” Ronnie scolded.
Quirk arched his eyebrow, all the way. “Tell me that you have pinpointed the vaccine cache, and I’ll put this Dr. Rolph through a full-on Rorschach test.” Apparently, Ronnie could not oblige. “Jennifer trusts her, and I trust Jennifer.”
He didn’t bother to add that Jennifer was also his beauty BFF. How many nights had they plucked their eyebrows together, even if on separate continents? Lord knew that he needed someone girly, since Ronnie thought towel-drying your hair added as much body as blow-drying it.
Ronnie held out her hand and took the phone. She rapidly typed, “How?”
Yep, that was his boss. Miss Chatty.
* * *
Amanda rocked back onto her heels, staring at the text. Such a simple question that begged a thousand others. Not the least of which—Was she really going to go through with handing perhaps the most sensitive wartime information in the history of wartime information over to a stranger?
A stranger who seemed in the position to actually act on her information?
“I have data that isolates areas of probable vaccinated populations.”
Amanda wasn’t sure what to expect, but the word, “Stateside?” popped up.
“Yes,” Amanda answered. “Several.”
Another long pause, then, “Here is a secure link. Send me everything you have. Hopefully, we can compare the data and pinpoint a nearby location.”
“What’s your data’s source?”
This time, the response from the other end was nearly instantaneous. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
Amanda was about to ask for a slightly more scientific explanation when the door opened.
“Dr. Rolph?”
Tucking the phone into her pocket, Amanda rose, albeit stiffly. “Yes?”
She found Devlin standing in the doorway. He looked like hell. Dark circles overtook his eyes, and his shirt was streaked with blood.
Amanda glanced down at Jennifer. If this was where she chose to stay, so be it. Amanda reached down to the tattered towel that Jennifer had fashioned as a blanket and pulled it up over her shoulder, tucking the woman in.
“Oh, God,” Devlin said. “How long as she been like this?”
Devlin’s hand flew to his own lymph nodes. “Jesus. We started showing symptoms at the same time.”
That they did. Amanda was about to walk past him when she realized that yes, in fact Devlin and Jennifer had come down with their primary symptoms at approximately the same time. Even spiking fevers within an hour of each other. Yet here Devlin stood, looking like hell but with no boils or blisters, and his fingernails looked pinker than even Amanda’s.
She was about to open her mouth, and then slammed it shut again.
Who had been her most outspoken critic during the early outbreak? Who had Hidden Hand materials in his possession? Who refused to send her theories up his chain of command?
Sure, Devlin looked rough, but no rougher than any guy without a shower for two days who had a mild flu. Where was the waxy cast to his skin? The reddened pustules along his arms? Amanda’s had ruptured hours ago.
Instinctively, she took a step away. Not because she feared he was infected, but because she feared that he wasn’t.
Unfortunately, her move allowed Devlin to see her computer screen, which was still uploading the data to Jennifer’s contact. His eyes darted, taking in the information. Devlin’s fingers gripped the edge of the table, his face flashing fury.
“Dr. Rolph, what have you done?”
He rushed her. Amanda grabbed the only thing nearby—a phone—and defended herself, knocking Devlin across the head. Her antigen-antibody inflamed joints flared as he slumped to the floor.
Of course, that was the moment when Dr. Henderson decided to walk through the door.
“Amanda, what have you done?”
* * *
Ronnie watched as the data scrolled in from the CDC. Most of it she didn’t understand. Something about the plague’s fomite vectors and intracellular disruption. No, what she needed was deeper. Ronnie opened the file labeled “Vaccine Loci.”
She skimmed through the documentation. Clearly, Dr. Rolph had been tracking at first hospital intake data, and then when the hospitals closed, home identifiers who were having antibiotics delivered to their doors, and then finally, the death count.
The numbers were staggering. So staggering that Ronnie didn’t even log them in her brain. She just kept skimming until she got to the conclusion, where Dr. Rolph identified small areas around the world that defied a pattern of increased resistance to the plague. Areas where there was a not-exactly-conspicuous lack of plague victims, but a statistical dip in cases. Most would probably chalk those differences up to an anomaly, within the margin of error. As a matter of fact, Dr. Rolph was splitting some pretty fine hairs. Finer than even Ronnie would.
Could these impossibly crunched numbers help identify the Hidden Hand’s stronghold? Did they really indicate vaccinated populations, or were they just figments of Dr. Rolph’s imagination?
Ronnie hit the icon to bring up the world map. Tiny pockets of statistically lower plague victims sprang up across the globe. While small, these areas numbered in the hundreds.
Gulping, Ronnie leaned back. Long ago, she had accepted the fact that the Hidden Hand had bioengineered the plague, and being evil geniuses had manufactured both an antiserum to treat acute cases and a vaccine to protect their own and those that swore allegiance to them.
“What’s wrong?” Zach asked. “Is the information bogus?”
No. That was the problem. The information seemed eerily correct. If Ronnie had any doubt about the Hidden Hand’s fortitude or ability to carry out a mass extinction, this data shattered it. Each of the tiny dots represented a Hidden Hand presence. Each was either within or near a major population center. They had established their presence exactly where it would be needed once those cities fell to the plague. Nation capitals. State capitals. Seats of power. Places where survivors would look for guidance. The Hidden Hand would be there to pick up the pieces and rebuild the world in their image.
“Ronnie?”
She still couldn’t answer him. Not with the ruin of the world staring back at her. To see the scope and breadth of the Hidden Hand’s campaign sucked the words right out of her mouth. If their enemy was this well organized, its network sprawled across the world, how well fortified would one of their vaccine repositories be? If the Hidden Hand had this kind of unlimited resources, how could they overcome them with just a few hours preparation?
Look at how well the Met had gone. And the museum only wanted to deter robberies. They were not prepared to shoot on sight. She wanted to voice this all to Z
ach, but she simply couldn’t.
Quirk was at her shoulder though, seldom at a loss for words. “What are those?”
Her assistant pointed to the scattered dots located in outlying locations. While far fewer in number, they still added up to dozens. These were barely blips. When she didn’t immediately answer him, he reached over and keyed in a few commands.
Dr. Rolph’s map overlapped the map that Ronnie had been working on. Her heart sank even further when the vast majority of the locales did not match. How could that be? Ronnie supposedly had a list of Hidden Hand safe houses, and Dr. Rolph had a list of vaccinated populations. Wouldn’t they be the same?
Something was off. It was like looking at a constellation sideways. They were at the edge of a pattern. So close that Ronnie could taste it in the back of her mouth. She turned the maps upside down, inverted them, and even stretched them, but she could not get them to line up.
“How did the musical symbols from Elvis factor in?” Quirk asked.
The musical symbols? Ronnie had chalked them up to a homage. What if they weren’t?
“Francois, are the members of the Hand within the Hand only painters?” she asked.
The old man opened his eyes. “Of course not.”
Ronnie smiled as she scrolled to the Graceland burning. She incorporated the musical notes, translated them into Hebrew, and then modified it all into angelic script. She plugged the numbers in. The map warped and dilated, and then came to rest.
“Dang,” Quirk said, pointing to Europe. “Venice is like a red-light district.”
The neighborhood of Santa Croce in Venice, Italy did flare brightly. It took a moment for it to sink in. Santa Croce was a junction of lower plague victims and an area designated by angelic script. Others appeared as well. One in Siberia, and another at the horn in Africa.
“Told you the King was the key,” Quirk announced. Perhaps he was right.
Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller Page 29