“Here’s the bottom line,” I began once everyone was settled down around the map. “Someone bypassed the security and opened the door to Room Twelve. As a result we have ten casualties: six medical staff, our prisoner, and three soldiers, plus one other soldier who has been bitten and infected by the walkers. That means that pretty soon he’ll be dead, too.”
Bunny and Top said nothing; they’d been there. Ollie ran a shaking hand through his hair. Skip looked ten years old and terrified.
“Who did it?” Skip asked.
“Unknown at this time.”
“This was an accident, right?” Ollie said.
I let silence answer that.
“Oh man,” he said. He looked down at the stock of his MP5.
Skip was a half-step slower. “Wait… you mean this wasn’t an accident? Someone did this on purpose?”
“Are we talking a spy here,” Ollie asked, “or a terrorist infiltrator?”
“We have to look at both options,” Church said, and when Ollie started to say something he added, “And until further notice this discussion is over.”
My guys all looked at me, and despite what Church just said I wanted to put my own stamp on things. “Right now we don’t know who did this or how many infiltrators we have, so until further notice everyone—and I do mean everyone—is a suspect. You don’t like it, too bad. I’m not asking for comments right now, but hear me on this: I will find out who did this and when I do that person is going to live forever in a world of hurt. If anyone knows or learns anything connected with this I want to hear about it. Come to me in private, talk to me one to one. I’m offering a white flag for contact but it expires in twenty-four hours, after which I’m going to be witch-hunting under a black flag. I want to know that you hear and understand.”
“Hooah,” growled Top.
Bunny nodded. “Loud and clear, boss.”
“Yes, sir,” said Skip.
Ollie bared his teeth. “We find whoever tried to rat-fuck us, you hold him and I’ll cut his balls off.”
The tension in the air was thick as quicksand. I handed out intelligence briefs. “Read through the materials. You have fifteen minutes.”
“Questions?” I asked when they all put the intel reports down.
Bunny cleared his throat. “Boss, not to be a pain in the ass, but all I’ve been reading here is ‘we don’t know this’ and ‘we don’t know that.’ I mean… what do we know?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well,” Bunny said to Church, “for a start who are the hostiles? Saying ‘terrorist’ kinda tells me dick. Sir.”
“I’ll tell you what I told Captain Ledger,” Church said. “The cell taken down by the task force represents a broad range of terrorist and extremist groups.” He turned and looked at Bunny, who was making a face. “Go on, Sergeant,” he encouraged, “ask it.”
“How does that make sense? I mean, sure we all call it the ‘international terrorist community’ but it’s not like they all get together for bowling night. It’s not a club, right? But we’re supposed to believe that these guys are, what, a terrorist coffee klatch?”
There were some chuckles and even Church managed a small smile. Probably fake, but still there.
“You find that to be unlikely? You’re an NCO with eight years in and you think Homeland is wrong in the way it interpreted the task force intelligence?”
He stared at Bunny and Bunny gave it right back to him. “Yes, sir, I think it’s bullshit.”
Church gave that smile again. “Of course you do, Sergeant, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” He let that sink in for a moment. “And if any of you ever accept info without thinking it through and raising reasonable questions you’ll be out of here so fast you’ll get motion sick.”
“Then…” Bunny hadn’t expected that kind of comeback and it derailed him for a moment.
“Tell me what we should infer, Sergeant,” Church prompted. “Because the intel, as far as details go, is correct. Those men were from different groups. We’ve verified that. Homeland thinks this means the terrorist community is uniting to form a front against America. What do you think of that?”
Bunny cut a look at me, and I nodded. I liked that Bunny was following the same logic I’d explored with Church. “Well,” he said, grabbing on to a leather strap as the chopper banked into a climbing turn, “we got a lot of ears and eyes out there. CIA got spooks out the ying-yang. Every branch of the service has their MI guys wiretapping the shit out of the whole Middle East. If the extremists were forming some kind of ‘axis of evil,’” and here he paused for a laugh, and got it, “then there’s no way we wouldn’t have heard at least something about it. All this time and we don’t hear a peep? No fucking way.”
“Go on.” Now Church’s smile seemed genuine.
“So… has anyone thought that instead of this being the start of the Terrorist Mighty Marching Society, it’s more like a kind of whaddya call it? A brain trust?”
“Keep going,” I said.
“Maybe someone—maybe the sick fuck who cooked up this prion bullshit—kinda had a great idea but needed an A-team to make it work. Not your run-of-the-mill fanatics but guys with real brain cells. The report from Dr. Hu says that this is—how’d he put it?—‘radically advanced’ technology. So somehow our bad guy puts the word out that he’s recruiting top of the line only.”
“I don’t buy it,” said Ollie.
“Me, neither,” agreed Top Sims. “That’d be in the wind, too. We’d have heard something. No, this smart sumbitch has a pipeline into the terrorist community and he’s directly recruiting. One to one. It’d be safer that way.”
“Sure,” Ollie agreed. “Easier to keep it all on the down-low.”
“But that brings up another problem,” said Bunny, but then he shook his head. “No, maybe a lead. If he’s recruiting outside of his own group then you got to figure there’s going to be a percentage of times he’s going to get turned down. Not everyone’s going to want to play that kind of baseball. If this guy is as smart as he seems to be, then he wouldn’t let anyone just stroll off who has even a whiff of what he’s doing.”
Skip snapped his fingers. “Right! We should check international records to see if any terrorists with known skills in high-end weapons or medicine have gone off the board. This guy would probably kill anyone who doesn’t sign with his team.”
Church turned to me. “Your team seems to be able to read your mind.” To the men he said, “Captain Ledger had the same thought and as a result I’ve initiated just such a database search. At his suggestion we’ve also begun searching for nonterrorist-affiliated scientists in the appropriate fields who may have disappeared, or whose family members are conspicuously missing.”
“Scientists might take all sorts of radical research risks if their wife or daughter were sitting somewhere with a gun to their heads,” Top agreed. “My kids were in that kind of danger, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do.” I saw a shadow pass over his face and remembered that he’d buried his son and saw his daughter crippled for life because of this war.
I said, “Okay, tell us why our mystery man is searching so far out of his own group.”
Bunny was about to speak but Ollie got there first. “ ’Cause even in a large group or small country you’re not going to have enough top minds in the right fields who are also extremists willing to die for their cause.”
“Right,” Skip said.
Top nodded. “Yeah, that’s too much to ask, and it’s too shallow a fishing hole. You need to pick and choose; you need to find the right guys—smart as a motherfucker and willing to die. That’s got to be a small club even worldwide.”
“What I’m saying,” Bunny agreed, nodding. “This stuff is slick. Really slick.” He sipped some coffee from a metal travel mug and looked at Church and me over the rim. “No one at Homeland thought of that?”
“Red tape and too many levels of bureaucracy can impede practical thought,” Church said.
&
nbsp; “Which is a nice way of saying they have their thumbs up their asses,” Ollie interpreted.
Church said nothing, but he didn’t appear to disagree.
Top narrowed his eyes and looked appraisingly at Church. “Sir… I pretty much know why you picked us. And those science geeks you got on our team? I’m gonna guess there’s not one of them that ever scored second best in the school science fair.”
Church smiled.
“So what we have here,” Skip said, “is an all-star squad.”
Ollie grinned. “Okay, so they got a geek squad and the DMS has a geek squad. But you also got a crew of first-team shooters. Who do they have?”
I said, “Javad Mustapha—one player on their team—started an outbreak that wiped out two DMS teams and over two hundred civilians. You saw firsthand what the walkers did to those kids and to the guards and lab techs in Delaware; and you know what happened in Room Twelve. We have shooters, they have walkers.”
That shut everyone up for a while and we sat there in the belly of the chopper as it tore through the Maryland skies.
“Surprise was a big factor in the loss at the hospital. Same goes for what happened last night,” I said. “What are the chances that any of us are going to be surprised if we run into a walker at the crab plant?”
Bunny snorted. “If it moans and moves I’m gonna kill it.”
“Hooah.” They all said it together.
“And if there are a lot of them?” Church asked.
“I killed me a bunch of walkers in Delaware, sir,” said Top, “and I was in a good mood. After Room Twelve I’m a mite pissed off.”
“Fucking-A,” Skip agreed.
“Fine,” Church said, “but here’s the thing. Echo Team is going into the plant for a look-no-touch. As you rightly put it, our intel is weak. The mission objective is to get more information because we got virtually nothing of worth from Delaware. If it looks like a pull-back-and-rethink then that’s what we’ll do. We have the option to upgrade into an assault but there are some operational priorities which include securing undamaged computers and drives, and apprehending suspects. If you have to pull triggers then try—and I mean really try—to bring me back someone with a pulse.”
Skip said, “I thought that these clowns die after six, eight hours unless they take a pill. How you going to sweat info out of them with that kind of deadline?”
Mr. Church’s face was stone. “My copy of the Geneva Convention got burned up in a fire. I won’t need six hours.”
They were four very tough men and every one of them was scared silent by the uncompromising tone of his voice. After a moment Ollie cleared his throat. “What do we do if we run into armed resistance?”
“If you draw fire you return fire. This is not a suicide mission, Lieutenant Brown. I’ve already buried too many of my people in the last week.” He paused to make sure everyone was giving him every bit of their attention. “You will try to accomplish the mission objectives in priority order, but you do what you have to do to come back alive.”
“Okay,” I said, “eyes on the map. The crab processing plant is located on the Chesapeake Bay off Tangier Sound. The southwest side of the building fronts the Pocomoke River eight hundred yards from where the river spills out into the bay. There’s a wooden dock where crab boats tie up. The rest of the property is a U-shaped parking lot. Lots of open ground.”
Ollie tapped the map. “Almost no cover. If they have cameras with night vision we’d be chopped to pieces. We’ll need some kind of diversion or another route in.”
“I have something in mind,” I said. “The building is one story, flat, and about fifty-five thousand square feet. Before it was used for seafood it was a boat storage warehouse, but has since been converted. We know from the building inspector’s report from this past January that the northeast corner is used for offices and bulk storage—empty containers, labels, rolls of plastic wrap, that sort of thing. The rest is the actual plant.”
“They still processing crabs in there?” Skip asked.
“Negative. The place is in receivership. The original staff was laid off on February fifteenth.”
“So, okay, if this place is closed then why are there, what… eight, nine vehicles in the lot?”
“That’s one of those things we don’t know,” I said. “Under ordinary circumstances I would presume that they’re there to oversee the company’s reorganization; but these three trucks here are all of the same make and model as the one followed to the crab plant by the task force.”
“Trucks carrying what?” Bunny asked.
“Cargo unknown, but it could have been one or more of those big blue cases.”
Ollie narrowed his eyes as he studied the satellite image. “What kind of traffic in or out since then?”
“Except for a security guard,” I said, “none.”
Top looked dubious. “We see anyone other than the guard?”
I shook my head. “No. Just the one guard and he works four ten-hour shifts a week, from ten at night to six A.M. Long-range photos have ID’d him as Simon Walford, age fifty-three, a rent-a-cop from a company based in Elkton, though Walford lives right up the road. He’s worked the plant for two years and change.”
“We know anything about him?” Skip asked.
“Nothing that fits the profile of a terrorist sympathizer. Widowed, lives alone. No military record, no arrests, no memberships in anything except Netflix and BJ’s Wholesale. Cheats on his taxes, but it’s penny-ante stuff to hide income from a side business he has repairing two-stroke engines. Lawnmowers, weed whackers. Son owns a lawn care business. His bank records show what you’d expect—virtually no savings, no portfolio, and maybe two grand in checking. Not living check to check, but close enough. His e-mail is clean and about the only thing he uses the Internet for is Classmates.com. His thirty-fifth high school reunion is in August.”
“So he’s a nobody,” Skip concluded, but Bunny and Top both turned to him.
“That’s not what the man said, boy,” Top snapped. “He said that he has no trail. Doesn’t mean the same thing as no involvement.”
“Trust no one,” said Bunny. “Didn’t you ever watch the X-Files?” Skip colored.
“I went over this guy’s profile,” I said, “and sure, it looks like he’s okay; but he could be anything from a turncoat to a closet mercenary to a convert to the cause. Or he could be clueless. We don’t know until we get there.”
“Just the one guard?” Skip said, eager to correct his mistake. “Four shifts a week?”
“One we’ve seen,” Church corrected, pleased with the observation. He leaned over and slid the box of cereal bars toward the young sailor. Skip hesitated and then took a granola one and looked at it for a full five seconds without opening it. I wondered if he was going to have it framed.
“The grounds are not patrolled during the day,” I said. “When Walford goes home he locks the gate from the outside. Except for Walford; no one else has come or gone.”
“If I say ‘that’s weird’ I won’t get a cookie, will I?” Bunny said, and Church kind of smiled. Bunny reached out and took a chocolate cereal bar with a “Mother, May I?” expression on his face. He tore it open and popped it in his mouth.
There was a burst of squelch and the pilot’s voice said, “ETA forty minutes.”
“Okay, guys… assessment,” I said, and everyone’s face sharpened.
Skip said, “Nine vehicles… so we got nine potential hostiles.”
“Truck had two,” Ollie said looking at his notes, “so make it ten.”
“No,” Top said, rustling his copy of the intel report, “look at page four. Trucks are registered to the company. Probably parked there on a regular basis, which means that the two guys who drove it there likely commuted in by car. We have six cars in the lot.” He looked up. “Thermal scans?”
“Place packs seafood,” Church said. “They got ice machines and refrigeration. Thermal signals are weak. We’ve picked up a max of four weak
human signals at one time. Distortion is too bad to permit any useful guesses as to how many people are in there.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Bunny said, “if this place has been shut down since the beginning of the year why the hell they running ice machines and fridges?”
I beamed at him. “That’s a damn good question, isn’t it?”
Church considered him for a moment, then pushed the package of cereal bars all the way over to Bunny. Skip looked crushed.
“Shit,” Top muttered. “So we got no idea what the hell we’re stepping into. Could be twenty people in there. Could be twenty of those dead-ass zombies in there, too.”
“We have to be open to any possibility,” I agreed.
Church nodded. “We know this: as of the Presidential Order in my jacket pocket that crab plant is now designated enemy soil. Rules of war apply, the Constitution is suspended. Hostiles are designated as enemy combatants.”
“Sucks to be them,” Bunny said, munching a cookie.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 2:33 A.M.
WE TOUCHED DOWN behind a volunteer fire station a mile from the plant. A second chopper stood nearby and the lot was crammed with all manner of official vehicles, most of them painted to look nondescript. But I’ve seen enough of them to tell.
We piled out and hurried in through the station’s back door. Gus Dietrich was already there, standing by two wheeled racks of equipment. Each member of the team was issued a communicator that looked like a streamlined Bluetooth. By tapping the earpiece we could change channels. Channel one was secured for team communication, which would be monitored by Church and his command group in a van that was parked a half-mile away from the plant. Other channels were for full-team operations, should it become necessary to bring in the special ops, SWAT, and other specialists on standby. One channel was reserved as my private line to Church.
The Saratoga Hammer Suits had arrived and we all tried them on. They fit like loose coveralls and were surprisingly comfortable and mobile. I did some kicks and punches in the air while wearing my suit, and even with the Kevlar vest and other limb padding it didn’t slow me down much at all. Bunny’s was a bit tighter and he looked like a stuffed sausage.
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