“One of your comrades told us that his family was being held hostage, that they would be killed if he spoke to us. Is this how they are controlling you?”
Church gave him nearly thirty seconds, not blinking once, and then the man gave us a single spasmodic nod.
“Thank you. I have covert operations teams in every country in the Middle East and Asia. With one phone call I will send a team to find your family. I can order that team to rescue them. Or I can order that team to torture them to death. I can order them to capture your family—wife, children, parents, cousins, nephews, and nieces to the fourth generation. If I order that then your entire family, perhaps your entire village, will cease to exist. Whether they remain in prison, or are tortured, or are released with false identities and money in a new country, is entirely up to you.”
The man spat out a single word. The Iranian word for “dog.”
“The word you’re looking for,” said Mr. Church, “is ‘monster.’ ” He said it in flawless Iranian. The word hit the man like a punch and he recoiled from it. “Let us understand each other. I know that you are a subordinate, a scientist or a laboratory technician. Your loyalty has been obtained through fear for your own life and the lives of those you love. A monster did that. Someone like me. That person was willing to kill innocent people—people you love—in order to create and release a weapon that will kill millions. Imagine what I would be willing to do—to you, and to your family—to protect everyone that I love.”
The man started to open his mouth, to say something else, but whether it was a curse or a confession was unclear because he found another splinter of resolve and bit down on it. His eyes and mouth tightened again.
Church leaned back and considered the prisoner for two minutes. That’s a long time to endure a stare from anyone, let alone from a man with the personal intensity of Mr. Church. The man squirmed and sweated.
“I do not believe that you are a military man,” Church said. “Military men are trained to be hard, to be tough, to resist torture. I can see from your face, from the softness of your hands, that you are not going to be able to resist torture. We have chemicals. We have appliances. We can be so very crude, and in the end everyone talks. Everyone. Even I could not endure some of the techniques that could be used, and I am not soft. This man here,” and for the first time he indicated me with a slight gesture, “is a battle-trained soldier. You saw him in combat today, you saw him kill many people. He is a soldier, a leader of men, a hardened killer. Even he could not endure if the torturer were truly committed.”
“I . . . I . . . cannot!” the man said in a voice so hoarse it sounded like there were jagged rocks in his throat.
“Yes you can. You will. No one can outlast what we have. Our science is too good. I have studied torture, I understand its magic. The only thing you can do is to talk to us now, to work with us, to help us fight this thing.”
“My children . . .”
“Look at me,” Church said with soft intensity. “See me. If you give me information right now I will dispatch my teams to find and protect them. If you don’t then I will still get the information out of you, but I will make sure that everyone who has ever heard your name will be hunted down and exterminated so no memory of you or your family will be left upon the earth.”
I felt a chill dance along my lower spine and I wanted to get the hell away from this man. If Church was only messing with this guy’s head he was doing almost too good a job of it. It was messing with my head, too.
The prisoner opened his mouth again, closed it, opened it again . . . and finally said, “You have to promise that my children will be safe. When they are safe and in American hands then I will—”
Church’s face was ice and his look stopped the man mid-sentence. “You misunderstand me, my friend. I will send teams once I have information from you. Every second you waste is a second longer that your masters have to realize that you are in captivity and that means that your children are a second closer to death. You are wasting the seconds of their lives. Is that what you want? Do you want to kill your own children?”
“No! In Allah’s name, no!”
“Then talk to me. Save them. Be a hero to them and to the world. Save everyone by talking to me now.” He paused for a moment, and then reinforced it. “Now.”
The man closed his eyes and tears broke from beneath the closed lids. He bowed his head and shook it for several moments. “My name is Aldin,” he said, and a sob convulsed in his chest. “I will tell you everything I know. Please do not let my children die.”
Chapter Seventy-One
Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 6:47 A.M.
WHEN I STEPPED out of the interrogation van I felt dirty. I understood the need for what Church had done, but it still made me feel like a piece of shit. Church had called himself a monster, and I think he meant it.
“Joe!” I heard my name and turned to see Rudy hurrying across the parking lot. He grabbed my hand and shook it, then stepped back to study my face. “Dios mio! Major Courtland told me what happened. I . . . I don’t have words for it, Joe. How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” I admitted, but before I could explain Gus Dietrich came over at a fast walk.
“Captain Ledger,” he said, “I have most of the forensics experts you wanted. The others are all en route and should be here by noon. Jerry Spencer is already on-site.”
“Okay, Sergeant, I want everyone cleared out of the building. Tell Jerry that I’ll be in there in a few minutes to do the walk-through with him.”
Dietrich smiled. “Detective Spencer seems to be pretty mad at you for bringing him into this, especially this early in the morning.”
“He’ll get over it. Especially once he has a big juicy crime scene to play with.”
“Mr. Church requested a medium-sized circus tent to be used as a temporary forensics lab. It’s being set up around the corner on the far side of the lot.”
“Church was able to get a circus tent on short notice?” Rudy asked.
Dietrich gave him a rueful smile. “Mr. Church has a friend in the industry.”
“Jeez,” Rudy said, shaking his head.
“Oh, and Gus . . . ?” I said as Dietrich turned away.
“Sir?”
I stuck out my hand. “Thanks for saving our asses in there.”
He looked embarrassed as he took my hand. “Sorry it wasn’t sooner.”
“Believe me when I tell you that it was in the very nick of time.”
He nodded and headed off. Rudy and I watched him go.
“He’s a good guy,” Rudy said. “I had a chance to get to know him yesterday and I saw him in action this morning. If there really is a mole in the DMS, it isn’t going to be him.”
“Would you bet your life on that?’
Rudy thought about it, nodded. “I surely would.”
“Glad to hear it.” We started walking over to a card table on which plastic tubs of ice were set. I rummaged inside and pulled out a bottle of green tea for him and a Coke for me.
Rudy tapped my bottle with his. “To life.”
“Amen to that. Look, Rude, Church just got finished interrogating the prisoner.” I told him about what Church had said to Aldin.
“Will he save the man’s family?”
“I think so. I heard him make the call and I don’t think he was bluffing.”
“That’s comforting.”
“That’s all you have to say? The guy’s a self-admitted monster, for Christ’s sake!”
“Joe, you’re tired and you’ve got symptoms of postincident stress, so I’m going to cut you a lot of slack. You’re all upset because Church threatened the man’s family, that he used psychological manipulation, that he—”
“He did more than that, Rude. He tore that guy to pieces.”
“Physically?”
“No, but—”
“So, all he did was scare the man into cooperating. No physical torture, no thumbscrews, no sexual or reli
gious humiliation.” He shook his head. “I wish I had been there to see it. It sounds brilliant.”
I stared at him. “Christ! Don’t tell me you approve of this?”
“Approve? Maybe. Admire, certainly. But turn it around, cowboy, and tell me how you would have extracted that same information. Could you have gotten the man to speak without resorting to physical torture? No, what you’re upset about is that you don’t know whether he was bluffing about the threats to the man’s family. You soldiers and cops talk very tough. Over the last twenty-four hours I’ve heard a lot of ‘kill ’em all’ and ‘let God sort ’em out’ stuff; lots of ‘we’re heartbreakers and widow-makers’ trash talk. To a large degree it might even be true, but a fair amount of this stuff is team cheers to get the players ready. Down on the real level you’re each human and there’s no way you can truly separate yourselves from the realities of war. You might have had to hurt Aldin physically in order to get him to talk; you might even have had to do permanent physical damage to him. Doing that would be hurtful to you, but it’s a battlefield thing, ultimately not much different than a sword thrust or a kick to the cajones. What you’re reacting to here is that Church inflicted damage on a completely different level. He hurt the man psychically, emotionally. Tough as you are I’m not sure you can do that, and you are very sure that you can’t. And yet . . . Church did not so much as slap this man across the face.”
“Okay, okay, I get the relativity of it, O wise Yoda,” I griped, “but that still doesn’t cover all of it.”
“I know,” Rudy said, nodding, “you’re afraid that Church might have been serious when he threatened that man’s children.”
I stared into the open mouth of my Coke bottle. “Yeah,” I said. “He called himself a monster.”
“Yes, but let’s both hope that he really isn’t that kind of monster.”
“And if he is?”
Rudy shook his head. “I’ve said it before, cowboy. It must be terrible to be him.”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 6:50 A.M.
RUDY WENT BACK into one of the trailers to conduct some postevent sessions with the remnants of Alpha Team. I spotted Grace standing at the aid station and headed over. Her eyes were red-rimmed but for now her tears were done. Maybe she’d cried herself dry, the magazine empty. I hoped Rudy would take some time for her soon.
As I approached she looked up, and in the space of a few seconds several emotions crossed her face. Grief, of course; but also pleasure and a little surprise, maybe as she realized that she was smiling at seeing me. Just as I was smiling to see her, and the sight of her was sending a warm and tingly wave through my stomach. The realization gave me a little jab of surprise, too. I felt it down deep. Understand, I’ve always held office romances in some degree of contempt, regarding the lovers as perpetrators of bad judgment, but as I became aware of feelings for Grace—however new and unformed they were—I couldn’t work up the slightest flicker of self-contempt. The angel on my right shoulder was getting his ass handed to him by the devil on my left.
“How are you,” I asked. “Or is that the single stupidest question ever asked since Nero asked his friends if they’d like to hear a little music?”
“I’ll get by,” she answered, handing me a cardboard cup of coffee. “I’m not going to let myself think too much about it . . . about my team.” She sniffed and tried to smile. “I plan to have a complete breakdown when this is all over.”
“If you want company for that, let me know.”
She gave me a penetrating look and nodded. “I may take you up on that.” She changed tack. “Your friend Detective Spencer’s been asking for you. Or, to be precise, he’s been asking where the effing hell you are and what do you think you’re playing at having him dragged out by a goon squad while he’s on medical leave. Words to that effect. He’s not the mildest of men.”
“Jerry’s okay. Good cop.”
“You must know that we interviewed him.” She paused. “That’s why Mr. Church and I were at the hospital. At St. Michael’s. We’d had our eye on Spencer since he first joined the task force, and after he was shot we followed his ambulance to the hospital and ‘borrowed’ him once he was free of the ER doctors.” She shuddered. “I don’t like to think what would have happened if Mr. Church hadn’t been on site when the infection began spreading through the hospital.”
“You think it could have been worse?”
“I know it would have been.” She gave me a strange smile. “It’s funny, but in all the time I’ve known him, in all that the DMS has done since I’ve been seconded here from Barrier, it’s the only time I’ve ever seen Church take direct action.”
“I get the feeling that he’d be pretty effective. He has the look. What was he, Special Forces?”
“I truly don’t know what his background is, and I’ve covertly tried to find out. I think he’s used his MindReader system to erase his past. No fingerprints, no DNA on file, no voice-print patterns, nothing. He’s a ghost and these days no one’s a ghost.” She shook her head. “When the walkers came flooding down the halls heading toward the lobby Church didn’t get angry, didn’t even show the shock he had to be feeling. He simply took action. I was outside by then, establishing a perimeter, so I only had glimpses of him through the big glass doors in the lobby. He didn’t seem to do much, but as the walkers reached him they fell, one after the other. I’ve only ever seen one person move with that kind of ruthless efficiency.”
“Oh? Who’s that? Maybe we should recruit him.”
“We did,” she said, locking my eyes with hers.
“Ah,” I said, feeling enormously uncomfortable. “I guess I need to add ‘ruthless efficiency’ to my résumé.”
“You know what I mean. You don’t hesitate. It doesn’t seem to affect you.”
The image popped into my head of the walkers in the hallway climbing over each other to get to me and how my hands almost slipped as I slapped a magazine into my gun. And then a second and more terrible picture began flashing on the big movie screen in my head: my hands reaching out to Grace in the lab and the moment of hesitation I felt as I worked up the nerve to break her neck to spare her from becoming a zombie.
“Believe me, Grace, it does. Really and truly. I nearly lost it a couple of times over the last day. No joke.”
Grace shook her head. “ ‘Nearly’ doesn’t count. But even so . . . Church is different, colder. He’s less . . .” She tried to put a word to it and couldn’t.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I saw a little bit of that today.” I told her about the interrogation, but like Rudy Grace seemed unmoved.
“What did you learn?” she asked.
“Not a lot, though Church is still working on him. The code name for the walker plague is Seif al Din. Translates as ‘the Sword of the Faithful’; but it has a second connection, and that may be the biggest tidbit we got out of Aldin. He confirmed that El Mujahid sometimes takes the name of Seif al Din. Kind of like Carlos being the Jackal.”
She nodded. “El Mujahid is a clever bastard. There are a lot of blokes in counterterrorism who would love to hang him very slowly from a tall tree.”
“I’ll buy the rope. But I’m not sure how fast we should label El Mujahid as our supervillain here, Grace. I read the Homeland profile on him when I was with the task force and I don’t recall anything that said he has a background in science. Explosives, maybe, but not medicine. He’s more of a field general than a lab rat.”
“Then he’s hired lab rats. Bin Laden isn’t an airline pilot but his people still flew planes into the towers.”
“Mm,” I said noncommittally. “Well, I’d better get inside before Jerry has kittens.”
She took my hand and gave it a hard, quick squeeze and started to turn away, then paused, doubt on her face. “Joe . . . ? We have the plant, the army of walkers they were making, the computers. Did Aldin mention anything about any other sites? Any cells we’ve missed?”
“No. He said he’d overheard the guards talking about possible locations for another site but he didn’t think they’d settled on a spot yet. This plant here is the main site. The factory floor, so to speak; and a lot of the stuff that was stored here was intended for use with future cells. He said the Delaware meatpacking plant was relatively new. A tiny lab, no computers, just a bunch of stored walkers. He didn’t even know about the captured kids or the experiments planned for them.”
“Do you think he was lying?”
I shook my head. “You weren’t in the room. Once he started talking he kept on talking. Hu got enough information to begin working on a research protocol.”
“Even so, what’s your intuition tell you? Have we stopped the immediate threat? Do we have time now to rebuild our teams? Or is the clock still ticking?”
“I . . . don’t know, Grace,” I told her honestly. She nodded glumly and headed off and I went to find Jerry Spencer.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 7:07 A.M.
JERRY SPENCER WAS pissed.
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for comin—”
“I thought I told you to leave this shit alone, Joe.”
“No, you told me that you hadn’t heard about the DMS and told me that I hadn’t, either.”
“Same damn thing. A smarter cop would have backed off, and I don’t appreciate being dragged into this. I made that clear to Church and that British broad and I thought I’d made it clear to you.”
“The British broad’s name is Major Courtland,” I snapped. “And too fucking bad if you don’t want to be involved. Look, I know you’re short and you’ve got your whole retirement mapped out, but this is national security. This is a crisis on a par with nine-eleven, and in a lot of ways it’s worse. So stop whining about it, grow a set, and help us bag these rat-bastards.”
He tried to switch gears. “Why’d you have them drag me into this? FBI’s got better crime scene investigators than me.”
Patient Zero Page 29