When the Stars Fell From the Sky

by David Spell

  Chuck heard the admiral sigh. "Alright. I understand. If I was a few years younger, I'd probably join you on an operation or two."

  McCain smiled to himself. Williams was in his late seventies but had been a Navy SEAL in Vietnam. On his second tour of duty in Southeast Asia, he had gotten shot in the leg during an intense firefight. It was a serious wound that meant he would have to leave his beloved SEALS. Even though Williams still walked with a limp, he had stayed in the Navy, eventually rising to the rank of admiral. Soon after his retirement, he was offered the job at the CIA.

  "I'd be honored to fight next to you, sir," Chuck said.

  "Well, thank you for that and thank you for the update. Is there anything else I need to know?"

  "No, sir. Not yet. My next call will be to my team in Virginia to see what kind of progress they're making."

  "Chuck, before I let you go, can you please ask your man Smith and ask him not to make any more obscene gestures at the news helicopters? It's not very good PR."

  "I wasn't aware that he'd done that, sir. I'll have a talk with him," McCain said, smiling.

  After they disconnected, Chuck felt his phone vibrate and saw that he had a text from Eddie.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tracking a Fugitive

  Blackstone, Virginia, Thursday, 1300 hours

  It had been a whirlwind of a day for Eddie and his team, and they were just getting started. Around 1100 hours, the DHS Lear jet dropped them off at the Blackstone Army Airfield in Blackstone, Virginia. Washington, D.C., CDC team leader, Jay Walker, and his men picked up the Atlanta officers, loading them and their equipment into two black Suburbans. The airbase at Blackstone was the closest one to Petersburg.

  The first order of business had been to find some food and a quiet place so that Eddie could brief the agents from DC on their crucial mission. Surprisingly, the military base had few amenities so they had started driving towards Petersburg, their first and, hopefully, only mission stop. When Marshall spotted the Fiesta Mexican Grill in downtown Blackstone he knew it would work.

  He asked Jay to pull into the parking lot where he got out and walked over to the other Suburban that contained Alejandro and Chris. "Hey, Hollywood, can you go in here and get us a private room? I figure you might be able to be a little more persuasive in Español."

  Estrada smiled and said, "No problem, boss. I'll be right back."

  Eddie looked at the four men from the Washington office. Team leader Jay was not very tall, maybe five foot eight but powerfully built, with close-cropped light brown hair. Definitely former military, Marshall thought.

  Jay's assistant team leader was LeMarcus Wade. He was around Eddie's size, six foot three and two hundred and thirty muscular pounds. The number three guy was Terry Hunt. Eddie had not heard him speak yet. Terry was a six footer and weighed in at a hundred and eighty pounds. Like so many elite operators, Hunt exuded confidence and competence without having to open his mouth.

  The last member of the DC team was an African-American version of Chris Rogers, the newest member of the Atlanta teams. Elbert Harris was probably older than he looked but Eddie guessed he still got carded when he bought beer. Chris was twenty-eight but looked like he could still be in high school.

  A few minutes later, Hollywood Estrada came out and waved the seven other officers into the restaurant. Alejandro had gotten his nickname because, prior to coming to work for the CDC, he had been with the Los Angeles Police Department. Before that he had served in the army as a military police officer for five years.

  "We're set, Eddie. We have a private room in the back."

  "Nice. What'd you tell them?"

  "I told them we worked for ICE but that we had already met our quota for the month on Hispanics. I told them we were looking for illegal Bosnians and we needed to have an important meeting over lunch."

  Eddie laughed. "Sounds good, Hollywood. The only problem is that it says, "CDC Enforcement Officer" on our badges."

  "We'll just say that we're a secret division of ICE. They're just happy we aren't messing with them."

  Over lunch, Eddie passed around pictures of Terrell Hill and told the other CDC officers of his role in the attacks the previous week that had killed thousands of innocent people. He saw the anger in the eyes of Jay and his men. Marshall knew they were locked in and would do what needed to be done to catch the terrorist.

  "How'd this guy get hooked up with the Iranians?" LeMarcus asked, sticking half a taco into his mouth.

  "He converted to Islam in prison," Eddie answered. "He was set for a full-ride scholarship to the University of Georgia to play football. He'd set a bunch of records as a high school wide receiver. The problem was, he earned his spending money by doing armed robberies. On the weekends, he and some of his friends would drive around looking for people to rob. They would do maybe ten of those over a weekend.

  "They finally got caught when this Mexican guy didn't want to give up his cash. He tried to fight back, even with three guns pointed at him. Terrell shot him in the leg. Somebody was watching it happen and called 911. The police got there quick and got all four of them. Hill thought he could outrun the German Shepherd and ended up getting chewed on. He did almost six years at the state pen in Reidsville."

  "So, what's he doing up this way?" Jay asked. "Has he got any family or friends in the area?"

  "None that we know of. He has four brothers and three sisters, each with a different dad. They all live in Georgia or South Carolina. His mom died while he was in prison. Drug overdose. He didn't have any visitors for his entire incarceration.

  "The intelligence we received was that somebody inside the joint gave him a local imam's name in Athens and the imam hooked Terrell up with the late Amir al-Razi. Amir was running the cell that orchestrated the attacks in Georgia. The FBI picked up that imam, by the way, and the future doesn't look too bright for him."

  The Washington CDC officers had heard what had happened in Atlanta and Athens the week before. Jimmy and Alejandro had shot and killed Mohamud Ahmed the previous Friday before he could launch a bio-terror attack near the Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta. That next day, Saturday, was when al-Razi and Hill initiated their zombie virus attacks in Athens. Chuck McCain had killed Amir but not before he had gotten off shots of his own, one of which had killed Rebecca Johnson.

  "Now," Eddie continued, "we think that Terrell is going to meet up with another Muslim cleric, Imam Ruhollah Ali Bukhari. He's based in Alexandria."

  "Alexandria is a long way from Petersburg," said Elbert Harris. "Why didn't we just start there?"

  "Terrell is still using his cell phone and we...I mean, another government agency, has been tracking it," said Eddie. "It looks like he's staying put in the Travel Lodge Motel just south of Petersburg. It could be that Bukhari is coming to meet him there. That would be the perfect scenario."

  Everyone around the table knew that Marshall's referral to "another government agency" was to the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency. It was common to get information from either of these agencies in the war on terrorism. No one else had access to their resources, and those two entities were often responsible stopping a terror attack by forwarding good intelligence to the right agency.

  "He's still using his cell phone?" Jay confirmed, surprised at that revelation.

  "No one said he was a very smart terrorist," Jimmy answered.

  Eddie nodded. "As of right now. We're still getting a signal from his phone at that motel. The FBI and local police are sitting on it. J. Edgar's boys, for once, are happy to play a supporting role. No one knows if Hill has any more of the virus. We have to assume that he does and that makes it our jurisdiction."

  Jay smiled. "This is shaping up to be a good day. Is his car still there?"

  "There's a black Ford Explorer like the one he stole backed into a parking space on the opposite side from where his room is. The FBI boys and girls didn't want to approach the car to confirm the tag. They're worried it mi
ght be booby-trapped."

  The other CDC officers shook their heads. They were all familiar with these kinds of stories about their brothers and sisters from the Justice Department. Like all police departments, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had some very good officers and some not so good officers.

  The FBI was finally starting to hire more people with local law enforcement experience. For years, however, their model had been to hire college graduates with law or accounting degrees. Those kind of agents were great for unraveling complicated money laundering schemes but not as good at taking down terrorists.

  "We'd love to take Hill alive, along with the cleric, if he's there. But, these are real bad guys. Terrell's boss, the guy he stole that Ford from, was found with a bullet hole in his head so we know he's armed. Plus, he turned a stadium full of football fans into zombies. If we can arrest him, great, but none of us gets hurt. So, if you guys are done eating, let's go grab a terrorist."

  #

  Petersburg, Virginia, Thursday, 1400 hours

  The FBI had seven agents in and around the Travel Lodge Motel. A male and female agent had checked into room 221 next door to Hill's. Two others were in a white surveillance van in the parking lot watching the terrorist's room. Another two-man team were in a gray Dodge Charger on the back side of the motel where they could keep an eye on the Ford Explorer. A pair of local, uniformed police officers were parked nearby in their marked cruisers, out of sight from the motel.

  Only the CDC officers knew the identity of the person in room 223. The FBI's assistance had been requested by the Department of Homeland Security, but the only information that they had been given was that the suspect was a person of interest with possible terror links. Supervisory Special Agent Daniel Ward secured a key card for room 223 from the front desk and waving his FBI badge and ID was enough for the clerk to promise not to rent out room 225. If there was gunfire, they did not want anyone in the surrounding rooms to get hurt.

  Agent Ward parked his gray Dodge Durango on the side of the convenience store across the street from the motel. He had joined the FBI right after graduating from college. After serving his time in some of the smaller field offices, he had finally managed to get transferred to the DC office, where he had always dreamed of working. There was something intoxicating about being so close to the seat of power.

  He had received orders that morning to drop everything and take his team and assist the CDC with whatever they were working on. It wasn't like he and his agents were lacking things to do. They all had full caseloads but when the Attorney General, or at least one of the Attorney General's subordinates, asks you to do something, you stop what you are doing and drive two hours south to Petersburg.

  What aggravated Ward the most was that he had no idea what they were dealing with. They had only been told that a person of interest was hiding out in the Travel Lodge across the street. If the CDC Enforcement Unit was involved, that meant the zombie virus.

  Special Agent Ward had no desire to get anywhere near someone who was infected with the virus or who might use it as a weapon. Those CDC agents were crazy to do what they did. He was perfectly satisfied to let them go in and deal with whoever or whatever was in that motel room. Ward just did not like to be kept in the dark.

  The fact that he himself kept local police in the dark when working with them was different. He only gave out minimal amounts of information when working with state or city police departments, knowing that the locals had to do his bidding. If one of the cops started asking questions, Agent Ward loved to ask, "Officer, do you understand what 'need to know' means? You have no need to know any more than I'm telling you."

  CDC team leader Jay Walker had called to let him know they would be arriving in twenty minutes and would give him more information then. Ward had tried to ask Walker some questions over the phone but the little prick had hung up on him. The two men had had contact on several occasions as the zombie virus had spread. The capital city had been one of the terrorists' early targets and sections of the city were still not completely secure.

  Jay and his men had been in the thick of fighting and in eliminating the infected in DC itself, Northern Virginia, and in Maryland. After one horrifying day of zombie attacks in the center of the city, Ward had made the mistake of asking Walker what was taking them so long to have the bio-terror threat under control.

  The CDC team leader's eyes had flashed with anger as he walked over to Special Agent Ward and stopped right in front of him. Jay was shorter than Daniel and had to look up at him. The CDC agent was covered in sweat and grime and stood so close that the FBI agent could smell him. Daniel, after getting the call at 0400 hours to come and help with the aftermath of that particular incident, had taken the time to shower and put gel in his hair.

  Walker, still holding his M4 rifle in his left hand, was clenching and unclenching his right fist. After staring at the taller man for a few seconds, he apparently made up his mind that the FBI agent was not worth his time. He turned and walked away. Ward realized that he had been holding his breath and exhaled.

  After that encounter, he had done some digging on the CDC agent. Daniel learned that Jay had joined the Navy right after high school and gone to Basic Underwater Demolition Training/SEAL or BUD/S and come out a Navy SEAL. He had served on several SEAL teams during his twenty-two year career.

  Agent Ward had called a friend at the Department of Defense for a little more background on Walker. The CDC team leader's military file was surprisingly thin for a SpecOp warrior who had over twenty years of service. The contact at the DOD would not tell Daniel much except to say, "Just don't piss this Walker guy off. His last four years of service were in SEAL Team Six and he's probably killed more people than he can remember."

  During the forty-minute drive from Blackstone to Petersburg, Jay asked Eddie about his background. "I was a Chicago cop for almost fifteen years. Then I got an itch to do something different, so I went federal, becoming a U.S. Marshal. That was the greatest job on the planet, or at least that's what I thought at the time. Now, I know I have the best job that a cop could have. What about you?"

  "I was in the Navy for a while. Then, I got recruited to come work for the CDC."

  Eddie laughed. "Yeah, we recruit a lot of Navy guys. Working on one of those big ships is a real help in fighting zombies. Were you a SEAL?"

  Jay grinned and nodded. "For twenty-two years. It was a great gig but you're right. This is a good job. Not quite as good as the SEALs but pretty close. The pay is a lot better and I'm not having to dump sand out of my boots at the end of the day like I did in Afghanistan."

  "Man, you have to tell me about your name. 'Jay Walker?' I thought black folks were the only ones to come up with crazy names."

  Walker smiled again. "My parents actually named me Johnny Walker. They were both teetotalers and didn't realize that they had accidentally named me after one of the most famous scotches in the world.

  "When I was two, we went to a family reunion and my drunk Uncle Joe, who's very good friends with Johnny Walker, laughed every time he saw me. He was always sipping on some of the amber liquid and he kept offering me a drink. My mom finally got tired of it and pushed old Joe into the pool. Thankfully, it was the shallow end, so he didn't drown.

  "After that, mom and dad started calling me 'Jay.' As I got older, I realized what they'd done. I had gone from being a bottle of scotch to a pedestrian traffic violation."

  "That's a good story," Eddie laughed.

  "Hey, I'm sorry about Rebecca," Jay said, growing serious. "I met her once when we were first getting started. She was up here meeting with our boss. A really nice lady. And you guys lost another officer a while back, right?"

  "We did. Marco Connolly was one of my guys. He got jumped by three Zs. My man, Hollywood, back there," pointing his thumb over his shoulder towards the other SUV, "got hurt trying to save him but they killed the zombies. The really sad part was that a little while later, Marco reanimated as a Z and Rebecca had to shoot t
o shoot him."

  Walker shook his head. "Sorry, buddy. I lost a lot of friends in the Middle East fighting ISIS. So far, our CDC office hasn't taken any casualties."

  The two SUVs pulled into the convenience store parking lot and stopped near Agent Ward's Durango. The eight CDC agents exited, ready for action. Jay and Eddie walked over to Ward's vehicle. The FBI agent was talking on the phone. He had seen the two men walk up but ignored them, continuing to talk on the phone.

  Eddie glanced at Jay. "Yeah, he's one of those," Walker said. "Supervisory Special Agent Daniel Ward. He's pretty much a...well, I don't want to poison your opinion of him so I'll just shut up now."

  Marshall chuckled. "Well, he doesn't have to be Mr. Personality as long as he and his people do what we need them to do."

  After making them wait for a few minutes, Ward got out of his vehicle. He nodded at Jay and shook hands with Eddie as the formal introductions were made.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting," said Ward, "but I was on the phone trying to get some more information about this operation."

  "I told you that I'd fill you in when we got here," said Walker.

  Daniel ignored him and looked up at the big agent from the Atlanta CDC office. "So, Marshall, tell me what all this is about. If you want our help, I need some answers."

  Eddie nodded. "What did you find out from your phone call?"

  "Nothing. No one knows anything about this mission. I'm not even sure this is a sanctioned project. I want to know everything right now," Ward demanded.

  Eddie glanced over at Jay again and winked at him. "Special Agent Ward, do you know what the phrase, 'need to know,' means?"

  The FBI agent's face flushed. "I have the highest security clearance in the FBI. Don't pull that 'need to know' crap on me!"