Deadly Strain (Biological Response Team)

by Julie Rowe

  “Yes.”

  She waited for him to pick one. It took her a moment to understand he meant yes to both. “Better get me a barf bag,” she said with a sigh.

  Movement behind her grabbed her attention. Smoke, Clark and March joined them, and she found herself dragged into a football huddle.

  “We’re leaving hot. Smoke, you and Clark take first and second seats. Hernandez, Runnel, the doc, March and I will strap down in the back. Is the formaldehyde and the crate of supplies the doc wants in the bird?”

  “In and secure,” Hernandez said.

  “Smoke, Clark, go.”

  They disappeared into the darkness.

  The men rearranged themselves to surround her, Sharp in front, Hernandez, Runnel and March on either side and behind her. She missed the signal they had to have been given, because they moved as one, almost carrying her along in their rapid walk to the helicopter.

  She got in and sat when one of the men pushed at her to do so. Buckling up her harness took only a few seconds, but the machine was still silent.

  A few seconds later, the engine started up, its high-pitched whine a shock in the velvet quiet of the night. Normally, it would take a few minutes before they would take off, but not this time.

  The whine rose and rose, until she feared her ears would burst. Then the entire machine shook with enough force to make her cling to her jump seat, her harness unable to protect her from shudders groaning through the metal.

  Grace clenched her teeth and prayed they didn’t take off, just to fall out of the air and crash.

  Someone grabbed one of her hands, forced it to let go of her seat and shoved something plastic in it.

  She brought it closer to her face. A barf bag.

  Funny.

  The whole aircraft shuddered hard. Again, and again. Something pinged not far from her head.

  “We’re taking fire,” Sharp yelled in her ear. A hand pressed against the back of her neck, forcing her to put her head over her knees. “Head down.”

  The helicopter flinched from several more blasts and gunfire.

  On the other side of her, someone grunted in pain.

  She turned her head, but it was too dark to see who’d been hit. She turned the other way and yelled at Sharp, “Who’s sitting on the other side of me?”

  “March.”

  “I think he’s been hit.”

  Sharp swore and unclipped his harness. He went around her and reached out to the man next to her.

  Grace put her hand on March’s shoulder so she could at least feel if he was responding to Sharp. Beneath her hand, he took in a breath and she could feel the vibration of his diaphragm as he answered Sharp’s questions.

  Sometime during their conversation, the noise and vibration of artillery and bullets disappeared.

  “How bad is it?” she yelled in March’s general direction.

  “It feels like a laceration,” Sharp told her. “Not a bullet wound. He took it across the shoulder.”

  “Can we turn on some lights now? I could bandage him up if I could see what I was doing.”

  “Sorry, Doc, we’ve got to run dark or risk getting fired on again.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  There was a pause. “Back home it sure is, but this isn’t Kansas, Doc.”

  Well, she certainly felt like a fool. “Right. Sorry.”

  “Never apologize for being a law-abiding citizen,” Sharp said. “We all wish we were home.”

  “How long are we running dark?”

  “About thirty minutes.”

  Grace reached out and squeezed March’s uninjured shoulder. When he leaned closer to her, she said to him, “You let me know if the bleeding doesn’t stop or gets worse. I’ll try to bandage you up blind.”

  “I’m putting pressure on it, Doc,” he said. “It should be fine.”

  When she didn’t let go, he added, “I promise to tell you if it doesn’t stop bleeding.”

  “Good.”

  Somewhat mollified, she settled back in her seat.

  Huh. For once, she didn’t feel airsick.

  The men around her stirred a long time later. The lights all came on and when Grace looked out the side of the helicopter, FOB Bostick was below them.

  The engine slowed and they dropped onto the same pad as the one they’d departed only two days ago. This time no one was shooting at them, but there was a strong force of soldiers surrounding the area. For their protection or other reasons?

  Smoke shut down the engine and Sharp got up first. “Stay here,” he said to her on his way past her and onto the tarmac.

  Grace resisted the urge to shake her head and spoke to March first. “Let me see your shoulder.”

  He held still while she got some of the gear off of him, tore open his uniform and slapped a nonstick pad on the wound then used a self-adhering bandage to keep it in place.

  She kept glancing out to check on Sharp, but he hadn’t gone alone. Hernandez stood just behind him and to his left. She picked Marshall out of the crowd as well, but he wasn’t the man Sharp was talking to.

  General Stone?

  Sharp nodded and gestured at the helicopter. Marshall turned his gaze on the aircraft and even though March was blocking the colonel’s view, she felt as if his gaze was a laser, targeting her for his next shot.

  Finally, after what felt like an hour, Hernandez jogged back to them.

  “We’re good,” he said as he gave the all-clear signal to everyone in the cargo section of the bird. He moved to tell Smoke and Clark, and within moments they were disembarking and walking toward the knot of officers waiting with Sharp.

  Her feet weighed twenty pounds each and she had to force herself to keep walking. She couldn’t believe Marshall would give up his anger just because a superior officer ordered him to. No, he’d suffered a loss that had wounded him in ways most people couldn’t even see, let alone understand.

  She was responsible for that loss.

  Sharp turned and stepped out of the way, revealing a man in his fifties, his salt-and-pepper hair buzz-cut short, with a face set in stone.

  She saluted along with the rest of the team.

  He returned the salute and never looked away from her face. “Major Samuels.”

  “Sir.”

  “You look like shit.”

  “Yes, sir.” Why argue with the truth?

  He regarded her coldly for several seconds, then asked, “Did you order, request or beg Commander Cutter to release you from Colonel Marshall’s custody?”

  “No, sir. I called them a bunch of idiots.”

  Stone grunted.

  “To be fair, sir,” she continued, “once I realized they weren’t going to revise their plan to leave the base, I agreed to go. Reaching Colonel Maximillian with samples could not wait.”

  Stone’s expression didn’t change. “All of you,” he said looking at the members of the A-Team, Marshall and Grace, “come with me.”

  He walked with them to the closest building, the one the team had used as their personal base, and turned to face everyone.

  “I’ve had this conversation with Marshall already, but you need to hear it too.” Still, he looked at Marshall, who nodded in return.

  “Two years ago, Major, you won the Bronze Star for your actions during an IED attack. During that attack, Joseph Cranston, part of your CASH unit’s escort, broke cover and rushed a child insurgent he believed was going to shoot you.”

  “Yes, sir. I saw it happen.”

  “What you don’t know,” Stone said as if she hadn’t spoken, “is that sending out a kid like that is a common tactic. Usually, a larger group of men wait for the kid to get close to their target, maybe even get a shot or two off, then rush the target while you’re
distracted by the whole kill-a-kid-or-die moral dilemma going on in your head.”

  She frowned. How did that change anything?

  “Cranston had been ordered to stay where he was. Told in no uncertain words to not break cover, that it was a trap. He disobeyed orders anyway.”

  “Because of me.”

  “No, because he wasn’t using his head. His CO knew your record, knew you were a crack shot too. You were semi-sheltered by the vehicle, treating the wounded, not out in the open where anyone could pick you off.” Stone sounded even colder than he looked. “Cranston made a decision that killed him.”

  Grace couldn’t stop herself from protesting the general’s uncompromising assessment of the event. “I don’t agree, sir. I believe he chose to help in the only way he could. He acted as a distraction for the enemy, one I needed because I hesitated to shoot that boy. I hesitated, and I would have been killed if Joseph Cranston hadn’t drawn the kid’s fire away from me.” She had to blink fast or let the tears in her eyes fall. “He was brave and he should have gotten the medal, not me.”

  “You believe that?” Marshall asked into the dead silence following her statement.

  She turned to look at him. For the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t look as if he was seconds from erupting. “Yes.”

  He stared at her for several moments, then nodded, though his lips quivered. “I did not order anyone to fire on your helicopter when you left here. I wanted to. I’d just found the two marines who were guarding you dead and believed Cutter and his men were responsible.”

  “We left them alive and well, if tied up,” Sharp told him. “I’ve got a question. If you didn’t order your men to fire on us, who did? Cutter was killed in that exchange of fire.”

  “I don’t know. I ordered everyone to stand down, but someone started shooting, and you know what happens after that. Once the first shot is fired, the battle is started whether you want it or not.”

  “You don’t know who took the first shot?” Sharp asked, accusation and disbelief making his tone a blunt instrument.

  “No.” Marshall was back to looking angry again.

  “Someone is working hard to make trouble,” Grace said.

  The general didn’t reply verbally, but one eyebrow rose enough that she continued.

  “The biological agent that killed the villagers has been confirmed as weaponized anthrax spores. The village was a test, to see the weapon at work, to gauge our response, and, as soon as I left with samples to be confirmed, my helicopter was shot down. We weren’t on the ground for long before extremists arrived and began killing any and all survivors. I don’t believe anyone was supposed to survive that crash.”

  “All part of the same attack?” General Stone asked.

  “I suspect so.” She turned to Marshall. “Did anyone talk to you about me? Maybe say things to make you believe I was at fault during the incident two years ago?”

  Marshall frowned, but didn’t answer. He glanced away, and she could almost hear the gears turning in his head.

  “When were you notified of the helicopter crash?” she asked him.

  “I was told there was a glitch with the radio on the bird, but that it was in the air and on its way to Colonel Maximillian’s lab. I didn’t find out it had crashed until several hours later.”

  “Who told you about the glitch?” Sharp asked, his voice rough with anger.

  “One of the men who was killed when you escaped.”

  “An infiltrator?” Sharp asked.

  “From Iowa?” Marshall shook his head. “I have spoken about the death of my son to one person. A trusted ally.”

  “Ally?” Grace asked. “He’s not an American?”

  “No. He’s Afghani, assigned by the Afghan government to liaise with us. I’ve known him for two years. His intel has been responsible for saving a lot of lives. I wouldn’t hesitate to have him at my back.”

  “Why would you talk about losing your son to him?” Grace asked.

  “He lost his own family three years ago in an Islamic State attack in Syria.” Marshall stopped talking for a moment to clear his throat.

  “His name?” Stone demanded.

  “Mohammad Asil Akbar.”

  “I want everything you have on him, including the man himself, brought here to me right now,” General Stone ordered.

  “Here, as in this building?” the general’s aide asked, eyeing the piles of stuff littering the corners.

  “Here. If we do have an infiltrator among us, this is not where he’d expect to be questioned.”

  “Yes, sir.” The aide and a couple of other soldiers hurried off to carry out his orders.

  Marshall walked over to talk to the general softly, and Grace found herself wilting under an exhaustion that seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. Her head pounded in time with her pulse.

  Sharp was watching her, and when she made eye contact with him, he walked over. “What’s up?”

  “I need some water.”

  He handed her a bottle of water from his pack.

  She took it, downed a few swallows, then took an antibiotic with a few more swallows.

  The general’s aide came in at a run. “Sir, Akbar is gone.” The soldier held out an envelope with Marshall’s name on it. “This was left in his quarters.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Stone reached out to take the envelope, and Sharp sucked in a breath to stop him, but Grace hollered first.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  Everyone froze.

  “Anthrax. Envelopes.” She nodded at a table that stood against the nearest wall.

  The general’s aide walked over, gently set the envelope down and backed away with his hands in the air.

  “Sir,” Grace said. “We brought an effective disinfectant with us, wash your hands in it.” She turned to the general. “I recommend you seal off Akbar’s quarters and work area.”

  “Contaminated?” Marshall asked.

  “I won’t know until I can test for anthrax, but it’s better to be safe rather than sorry.”

  Marshall ordered a man to bring some of the disinfectant from the helicopter.

  “What would it look like?” Sharp asked. “If there was anthrax planted there.”

  “That’s the problem,” Grace said to everyone. “The spores are so small, you’d think it was a little bit of dust.” She sounded as worried as he felt. Dust? How were they supposed to fight that? With vacuum cleaners?

  “General Stone,” Sharp said. “This attack could be aimed against you or whichever high-ranking officer it would require to clean up this messy situation. Respectfully recommend you leave the base.”

  “Or, the people behind this attack could be waiting for me to leave,” he said. “It would be relatively easy to take me out in a helicopter.”

  “Not if one left before yours as a decoy.”

  The general grunted and considered the floor for a moment. “Major, could this anthrax be produced anywhere?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Some mobile labs are fully equipped for anthrax. Max is working in a portable isolation chamber in a cave at this moment. And, if you’re not too concerned with safety, all you really need is power and privacy.”

  “Afghanistan is riddled with caves.”

  “For a lab to be operating for any length of time, they would need to bring in fuel for the generators.”

  “And other supplies, as well.” Stone nodded and turned to Marshall. “Have your people review satellite pictures of the region from the past month. Look for fuel and other supplies going into the mountains, or vehicles leaving full and returning empty.”

  “Yes, sir.” Marshall turned and nodded at a man, who ran off to carry out the orders.

  “I’ve got a bio-suit
, but I’ll need a Sandwich,” Grace told the general.

  “I can have one here in three hours,” Stone said. “Colonel Maximillian organized resupply for this eventuality.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Until it gets here,” the general said, pointing a finger at her, “you are to report to the base hospital. You will follow any recommendations the ranking doctor might make. Understood?”

  “But, sir, Akbar’s quarters?”

  “There are people on base who can take care of that. Hospital. Now.”

  Grace looked like she’d just sucked on a lemon. “Yes, sir.” She turned her sour expression on Sharp, but all he did was smile back. She needed care and he was willing to play dirty to make sure she got it.

  Grace saluted the general and left to follow her orders, he hoped.

  “You.” The general looked at him with a scowl on his face. “You’ve made yourself responsible for the major?”

  It wasn’t exactly a question, but he answered it anyway. “Yes, sir.”

  “Commander Cutter was your CO and now he’s dead.” The general shook his head. “What a goddamn mess.” He looked at Smoke, March, Clark, Runnel and Hernandez. “Is this all that’s left of your team?”

  “No, sir. Our second in command, Leonard, is at the village north of here where the anthrax first appeared, with the other two surviving members of the team.”

  “I’ve sent reinforcements up there and ordered anyone healthy to return here. They should be joining you soon enough.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your job is to dog the major’s steps. Never let her out of your sight. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.

  “I don’t care if she squawks loud enough to raise the dead, you men go where she goes.”

  “She’s that important?” Marshall asked, his own expression sour.

  “People with her skills don’t grow on trees. We’ve got less than a dozen specialists like her in the army,” the general said. “But she’s also reckless. You boys keep her out of trouble or I’ll have your asses over a hot fire. Understood?”

  “Sir, yes, sir,” they responded together.

  “Go,” he ordered.