Viral Justice

by Julie Rowe

  Cornett and Bull.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The fuckers had Bull and their French buddy Cornett. Had them and it looked like they were going to kill them. Bastards.

  On the other side of Tom, Max turned the air blue around him. Ali hadn’t realized he knew that many swear words. The situation called for every single one. Fury made her hands shake a little, because there was nothing she could do to stop what was about to happen. Max wanted to go unnoticed, had ordered them to make no unnecessary contact with anyone. She understood his orders, but it tied her hands, made it impossible to help Bull or Cornett.

  Until Max changed the rules.

  “Tactical evaluation,” he said to her and Tom. “I want to hear any and all ideas that might get Bull and Cornett out of there alive.”

  “Sir,” Tom said, his voice that of a man who has to deliver bad news. “We’re not allowed to—”

  “What?” Max asked. “Save a valued asset?”

  “Sir, there’re a dozen men armed with rifles and they all look like they know how to use them. If we try to extract Bull and the other guy, it will just get them killed.”

  “Is that your tactical evaluation of the situation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How many armed men are there?”

  “At least ten,” Tom said.

  “I see fourteen,” Alicia put in. “A couple are walking a circuit around the edges of the crowd.” She studied the situation for another few seconds. “There’s no way for us to pick off more than two each without them taking cover. There are too many places to hide and too many people to hide behind.”

  Max stared down his scope for a few seconds, then asked, “Can either of you tell if Bull and Cornett’s legs are tied?”

  “I think they’re loose, but it’s hard to tell,” Tom answered.

  “What if you hit just one man? The one doing all the talking,” Max said.

  “Or the one doing all the talking and one other. Someone aggressive...” Alicia’s voice trailed off. “The one standing behind Bull. He seems steadier than the guy behind Cornett. Shooting those two will give our boys the best chance of getting away.”

  “Where are they going to run to?” Tom asked. “Tied like that, someone would have to meet up with them right away and get them out of there and out of sight quickly.”

  “Max, do you mind a suggestion?” Alicia asked. Did he really think of her as a soldier capable of doing her job, or a woman who needed to be protected?

  “I would be grateful for one.”

  Score. “I play sniper and take out those two targets specifically. Max, you act as my spotter while Tom helps get them out of the danger zone.”

  Max didn’t respond immediately, but she could almost see him running her idea through several mental simulations. After a few seconds he turned to Tom. “Your take?”

  “The same. It’s the only option I can see working.”

  “Let’s do it. How long until we set this in motion?”

  “Give me a couple of minutes to get down there and close enough to do some good before you start putting bullets into people,” Tom said, already crawling backward toward the hatch in the roof.

  “Okay,” Max said, sliding closer to her. “What does a spotter do?”

  “Normally, you’d have a special scope to determine wind speed, but the one you’ve got isn’t bad. Use it to keep an eye on all the moving targets and anything else that might be a distraction.”

  “Got it.”

  Max settled in, his body relaxed in a way it never was when he was shooting at a target, be it a paper outline of a man or the real thing.

  She almost pointed it out to him, but stopped herself. He didn’t need to think about that now.

  She followed his example instead, relaxing into her prone shooting position, following the target doing all the talking. He was moving around a lot, but he paused to pivot on one foot then turn to pace one way then the other. Those pivots would be the best time to take her shot.

  She was so wrapped up in formulating her shooting strategy that she caught only the last of Max’s whispered comment.

  “...ave a couple of minutes.”

  Shit. “What?”

  “I don’t think we have a couple of minutes. Look at the leader’s body language,” Max said, sounding worried. “He’s working himself up to something. I think he’s almost there. Can you take the shot without Tom in position?”

  “I might get both men killed if I take it now.”

  A second later, the leader shouted and walked with purpose toward the two men kneeling on the ground. He raised his rifle and pointed it at the back of Cornett’s head.

  She found the center of the leader’s head in her scope and tightened her finger on the trigger. Not enough to fire, but enough to keep her body poised on the edge of action.

  All her choices had disappeared but one.

  Would that one save either man or would it make no difference at all?

  “Take the shot,” Max ordered.

  An evil smile spread across the leader’s face.

  Alicia squeezed the trigger.

  She watched as a small dark hole appeared on the leader’s forehead. He toppled over backward.

  She found the forehead of the second man, the one with his weapon trained on Bull. “Second target acquired.”

  “Take the shot,” Max ordered again.

  She complied, then watched as this man also fell back bonelessly.

  For a moment, the scene seemed frozen in time. Some of the gunmen stared blankly at the two dead men. Others hadn’t yet seen what had happened.

  A second later, people scattered, some screaming, some firing their weapons.

  Bull jumped to his feet, and though his hands were tied behind his back, he launched a kick at the man who’d had his rifle pointed at Cornett before the leader had come along.

  He was a fraction of a second too late.

  There was a muzzle flash and Cornett slumped forward.

  Bull’s kick landed, sending Cornett’s murderer to the ground. He kicked the rifle out of the gunman’s hands, and would have stomped on his head, except that someone else tackled Bull.

  He hit the ground hard.

  Two men raised their weapons at him, but before either could fire, they were shot instead.

  Tom raced toward Bull, shooting everyone who pointed a weapon at him or Bull. He reached the soldier’s side and a knife flashed as he cut the rope tying Bull’s hands together.

  Bull grabbed the rifle of one of the dead men, then he and Tom raced back into the maze of houses, where they disappeared from sight.

  “Where are they?” Max asked after a couple of seconds.

  “They went to ground,” she told him. “Which is what they should do in a situation like this. They’ll surface when it’s safe.”

  “I’d like confirmation that they’re okay,” Max said, his voice hoarse as if he’d been yelling for hours. “Fuck, Cornett is dead.”

  A bullet ricocheted off a rock near his head and they both ducked down.

  When a second shot in their direction didn’t materialize, Alicia used her scope to scan the area, try to find the shooter. Picking any one particular person was going to be difficult. It was chaos down there.

  People were running, yelling and there was some shooting still going on, but it didn’t seem planned or deliberate, only reactionary.

  Whoever was holding the reins to the men looking for the Americans was either dead or gone.

  She and Max kept watch on the entire village, but no one stood out as either a threat or assistance.

  Tom would likely wait an hour for dark to arrive before moving.

  Darkness would bring more men and more supplies. Sh
e could only hope it didn’t bring more bad guys with it too.

  Next to her, Max seemed particularly interested in a specific house whose front door and windows faced them.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked. The place appeared average in every way and there was no activity that she could see around it. There were a couple of dead bodies, still clad in their clothing, pushed up against the wall of the house. Their faces had been turned toward the wall, but they hadn’t been wrapped in sheets or blankets.

  “The dead,” he replied. He was silent for a few seconds before he added, “And the living.”

  He pulled away from his scope to look at her. “I’m seeing a lot of sick people, Ali.”

  A cold shiver went through her body at his tone and expression. She’d never seen him looking so worried. “What does that tell you?”

  “We could be looking at a new pandemic flu.”

  “You mean like that bird flu from a few years ago?”

  “Sort of. That one didn’t spread like we feared. Which is the reason why the human race is still here, because its mortality rate was horrific. We got very, very lucky with that one. This one looks worse, and all I see when I look at the unarmed, is the sick.” His hands opened and closed like he was holding himself back from some action.

  “You really need your equipment don’t you?”

  “Yes. If this virus gets out of this village, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”

  “Well,” she said, turning her weapon and scope toward the edge of the tents surrounding the village. “No one is getting out at the moment.” As she watched, armed men stopped a group of six and forced them to turn around and return to the tents.

  Max shifted to observe them. “Are they afraid of getting sick or are they doing it because someone ordered them to?”

  “I want to know who’s looking for Americans,” she said. “Is it extremists who want hostages to threaten on TV, or was someone expecting us?” She looked at him. “Does this feel like something Akbar would do?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Max said with a frustrated huff. “The problem is believing that he’d be using a flu virus.”

  “Why?” Alicia asked. “I mean, one virus isn’t much different than another, right?”

  “No.” Max ran his hands through his hair, something he did only when he was worried. “Influenza viruses mutate extremely rapidly. They pick up bits of genetic code from other viruses they come in contact with inside carrier animals. Pigs, birds and bats are some of the animals that act almost as a mixing pot for influenza viruses.”

  “Could Akbar control the changes? Make a customized flu?”

  “It’s been done in labs, but you need specialized equipment and supplies he just doesn’t have access to. It would be dangerous to try to create something without a fully equipped lab. Even more dangerous than working with anthrax.”

  “From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t care about danger.” She’d read the reports, especially Dr. Sophia Perry’s account of her run-in with Akbar, when he’d tried to create a rabies virus that could be easily transmitted from human to human.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Max said.

  Movement in the street below. Alicia turned her scope to see who was approaching.

  “Tom and Bull are coming. That was fast.”

  “I’ll go down and meet them,” Max said. He crawled to the hatch and disappeared into it.

  She watched the street for anyone following, but no one seemed particularly interested in what two men, one playing sick with a racking cough, were doing.

  Just before they got too close to the house for her to keep watching, Tom looked up at her, his expression dark and worried.

  So, not good news, then.

  A woman’s crying grabbed her attention. The door to a home a few houses down the street as opened and a man came out carrying a small bundle. He put it on the ground, but the woman moved to pick it up. He grabbed her by the arm and tried to pull her away.

  She’d gotten a piece of it and the blanket-wrapped bundle unraveled.

  A child.

  The pale skin and absolute stillness of death made looking at the body harder than it should have been. She’d seen death before, but never like this. Never with the agony of the living right in front of her.

  A whisper of sound behind her. Someone was coming out through the hatch.

  Tom. He crawled over to her and said quietly, “Max wants you downstairs. I’ll keep watch.”

  She nodded and made her way down into the house.

  Max was examining Bull in the kitchen. The soldier was bare to the waist, while Max was standing behind him poking at one massive bruise on his back.

  After what she just witnessed, she craved Max’s lean, confident strength and warm hands on her skin. Strength that knew exactly how and where to touch to take away pain or bring pleasure.

  “I don’t think you have any broken ribs,” Max said to Bull. “But I’m going to wrap them anyway. Broken or bruised, they’ll still hurt.”

  “Thanks, Max.”

  “Any knife wounds, cuts or other damage?” Max asked as he pulled out a stretchy, self-adhesive bandage from his backpack and began wrapping it around Bull’s rib cage.

  “Nothing so specific. They beat the shit out of me, but it was all fists and feet. No weapons were used.”

  Max nodded. “You can put your clothes on. Please repeat your story for your youngest brother.”

  Bull pulled a T-shirt over his head, then carefully shrugged into his shirt while he said, “Cornett was CIA. He’d been in that French group for a couple of years. He tracked a rumor that Akbar was here, but found no evidence of the man. The goons who grabbed me acted like your standard extremist group. All holy jihad and destroying the infidel. The thing was, some of them whispered that they weren’t supposed to shoot any of the Westerners they caught.”

  “How was Cornett’s cover blown?”

  “He didn’t know, but someone gave the goons an accurate description of him and what his cover story was. They knew exactly where to find him.”

  “How did you get caught?”

  “Pure, dumb, bad luck. I’d found him in one of the tents with a couple of other people from the aid group he was with. We got corralled together and no one asked us a thing until we were tied up.”

  “Were you questioned?”

  Bull smiled, showing off split lips and two black eyes. His whole face was one giant bruise. “Yeah, I played dumb son looking for his mother and sisters.”

  “So, killing Cornett was a mistake?”

  “Yeah. Some of those goons were afraid of what would happen if the nutcase leading them killed any of their captives. They’re afraid of someone. Very afraid.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What about the other aid workers?” Max asked, his stomach tight. Cornett might have been CIA and aware of the risks he was taking, but the people he was using for his cover probably weren’t.

  “We were separated into two groups. The other three were taken somewhere else.”

  “Anyone trying to leave is being forced back into the village by armed men, so they’ve got to be here somewhere,” Alicia said.

  “We don’t have enough people or weapons to liberate them,” Max said, knowing he wasn’t the only one to consider the idea. “And a firefight inside this village would result in too many civilian casualties.”

  “They’re dying anyway,” Bull grumbled. “Out in the tents, people are dropping like flies.” He sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, testing his ribs and the bandage around them.

  Max tilted his head to one side. “How many of the men who took you were sick?”

  Bull shrugged, then winced. “At least half of them.”

  “Did you notice any bodi
es that could have been their dead?”

  Bull stopped poking at his ribs. “Yeah, there was a pit they were throwing the dead into. When I looked in it, all I saw were men. No women or children.”

  “So,” Alicia said in a businesslike way. “We have a village and refugee camp full of extremists and a flu that’s killing people in large numbers.”

  What a clusterfuck.

  What was even worse, this had been planned. By someone else.

  “This is not the situation I was told to expect,” Max confessed. “The illness, yes. The extremists, no.”

  “Well,” Alicia said. “This is the situation we’ve got.” She looked at him and smiled. It was the kind of smile that reminded a man that not all women were sweetness and light. If you made her mad or hurt those she considered hers, she’d rip your guts out and thank you politely when she was finished. He’d never really considered the advantages of having a partner who could be ruthless in doing what she thought was right. He was starting to love that about her.

  “Do we stay or go?” she asked him.

  If they left, most of the people here would die.

  If they stayed, they’d be fighting on two fronts. Against militants and against a virus whose exact identity was yet unknown.

  The virus was the first priority. If it spread and maintained its current infection and mortality rate, thousands—no, millions—of people could die.

  “We stay.”

  Bull and Alicia both straightened a little.

  “Screw just four guys. I’m going to ask for a full Special Forces team and another portable lab.”

  “A supply drop,” Alicia said, “would give our extremist friends something to chase while our guys infiltrate.”

  “These people need the help as well.” Max nodded, then grinned. “Excellent suggestion, Sergeant.” There was nothing sexier than a smart woman who knew how to play dirty.

  Bull coughed and looked away.

  Alicia bit her bottom lip and said. “Thank you, Dad.”

  Max sighed. “This cloak and dagger shit is a pain in the ass. I’m going up to the roof to make my call.”