The banging of opening doors caused her head to turn towards the noise. Two aides pushed a gurney containing a man strapped down by his chest, arms, hips, and legs. His screams shattered whatever illusions of calm Stanley had harbored. One of the aides sported a black eye and called out to her.
“Yo, House, we're gonna need to go straight to the Vitamin H on this one.”
They called her House because, like the doctor in the popular TV show, she had a knack for identifying rare problems. She knew it was a compliment, but she couldn't help feeling that she didn't even know ten percent of what she needed to.
Plus, House was opinionated, tall and male, whereas she choose her words carefully, and stood only five foot one, a hundred five pounds. OK, maybe a hundred ten, but no more.
The Vitamin H reference bothered her, but she said nothing. They all referred to the drug Haldol with this slang, but doing so in front of what seemed to be a relative of the patient was not appropriate. She probably wouldn't say anything about it, it wouldn't serve any purpose. The E.R. was hard enough without a nurse on your case.
In a second Stanley stood by his side and examined the patient. She took in the pale face and the bloodstains on his shirt. “Is this who he came in with?” She gestured to Brandon.
The aide acknowledged it with a slight tilt of the head. Brandon's face bore a look of worry, one Stanley had seen too many times to count. She smiled, knowing from experience that getting information from a relative was easier if they remained calm. “Is this your dad?”
Brandon swallowed and nodded.
“Don't you worry, we'll take care of him. What kind of problems has he been complaining about?”
“He—he puked up blood. He's been sick for a few days, tired, says his mouth hurts. I don't think he's been eating or drinking much.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Ok, that's what I needed to know. Is there anyone else we need to call?”
She phrased this last question in a deliberately vague manner. With divorces and various alternatives to the traditional couple, she couldn't tell him to call his mother without risking an angry or hurt reaction. In this case, he shook his head.
“I called my mom in the car. She said she's coming right down.”
“You did the right thing, ah, what's your name again?”
“Brandon, ma'am.”
“Brandon. I'm Enid Stanley, I'm a nurse. Why don't you have a seat in the waiting room and I'll come find you as soon as we have your dad calmed down. Okay?”
He looked down at the gurney, as if not quite ready to leave. Then his shoulders sagged and he turned and trudged away. Stanley turned to the aides. “No Haldol yet. This guy's in serious pain, I'd probably be flipping out too. First we try morphine.”
Stanley had no qualms about using Haldol, a psychiatric drug, to calm down patients who were seriously flipping out and endangering others. For example, someone high on cocaine or someone receiving treatment unwillingly. A lot of times, though, severe pain caused erratic behavior, and a simple pain killer would do the trick.
She and the two aides held down his shoulder and got an IV drip into his upper arm. Three minutes later, he'd stopped struggling, and she looked inside his mouth with a small flashlight. She saw the sores. He felt cold to the touch, even after all that exertion.
The vomiting blood bothered her the most. A much bigger problem than general weakness and a few sores. What if the other flu patients started to show signs of that? Her vague unease would expand into full-fledged fear.
Calvin Logworth held on for another twenty-six hours before his heart stopped. His wife, Rita, sobbed and clung to his hand as if she could will him to keep fighting. But the drugs had prevented him from feeling any pain, and he had no fight left. After his third bout of regurgitation, they gave him a drug to prevent vomiting, Palonosetron. The drug was often used to help dull the side effects of chemotherapy, but since Logworth didn't have any nausea, it proved ineffective. Several hours before he died, they made a last ditch effort with a drug designed to prevent vomiting by relaxing the muscles of the alimentary canal. Still in its final trials, it didn't even have a name, just the designation CU387. It worked to stop the vomiting.
He died anyway.
Nurse Stanley didn't know it yet, but Logworth was not the first victim to die. Back on December sixth in Atlanta, Georgia, a five year old girl undergoing leukemia treatment had welcomed her mother home from a business trip with a big hug and kiss. Four days later, her compromised immune system gave up its lopsided fight against the virus. By the time Rita Logworth wailed over her husband's lifeless body the next day, two more were dead, both octogenarians. But only at Cedars Sinai did anyone wonder if they were looking at a new epidemic.
Stanley lay down in the break room and closed her eyes. She'd finished her shift, taken twelve hours of downtime, and returned to find Logworth still vomiting. Soon he'd been moved out of the E.R., but she checked on his progress and heard about his death. They simply had not come up with anything to save him. She suspected it wouldn't end there. Another fifty had come into the E.R. with the flu-like symptoms and the sores, a large number even for the height of flu season. A dozen of those presented the nausea as well.
No one else had died, aside from some idiot who'd taken enough PCP to wonder if he could stick a knife into his abdomen and watch it come out the other side. But she knew the issue of quarantine procedures was already being discussed. The difficulty lay in knowing whom to flag for such treatment. Only the ones vomiting? Everyone with the sores and weakness? Or even everyone with something resembling the flu? If it was up to her, she'd look for the combination of weakness, stuffy head and sores, but no fever. Using the sterile rooms for everyone with those symptoms would put a strain on their resources for sure. But not nearly the kind of strain they'd feel if there was a contagious disease and it spread to other patients.
Or worse, to the hospital staff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
December 11th 2012: Washington, D.C.
“Sir, you're gonna want to see this.”
Jason Andrews looked up as one of the agents delivered the news. He couldn't even remember everyone's name, which made him a terrible boss, but with the President possibly the target of a serial killer, he controlled quite a bit of manpower. Rollins, Robbins, was it one of those?
“Of course, of course, sit down. Tell me what you got.”
“We got these transcripts from the NSA. Part of their net of gathering phone calls. A bunch of stuff is redacted, like where the call originated and terminated and why it was picked up in the first place, but look at the name that was mentioned.”
Andrews put on his reading glasses; he couldn't read anything less than twenty point text without them these days. Getting old was a bitch. He read the name “Andrea Schmidt.”
“That's kind of a common name, isn't it? Surely the NSA gets a lot of those?”
“Well, yeah, but there's more. You probably know that the Army as a matter of practice saves DNA from every soldier. To identify remains if the need ever arises. They don't publicize it, for obvious reasons. They also save voice-prints on a lot of soldiers. And they have one in their computer for the Andrea Schmidt who is of interest in our case. In fact, that's the only reason this transcript came our way. The involvement of the Secret Service allowed us to put out a blanket request with all the intelligence agencies and DHS for any information on that specific soldier.
“They didn't balk because she doesn't have any restriction on her records. And the voice match was an automated thing, so it came our way without any human intervention. The only odd thing is that normally this kind of check doesn't get done unless the intercepts are flagged for something special. I'm not sure what that means.”
Andrews stood up. Like most people, he thought better on his feet. “I suspect it means the phone she used is targeted in some sort of ongoing investigation. Most likely something useless, some analyst got his panties in a bunch about a guy using bo
mb and plane in the same sentence. Not exactly ‘bin laden determined to strike in the U.S.’ Still, it's our good luck.”
“And did you see the rest of it?”
“I sure did. Baltimore Airport, earliest arrival tomorrow. The question is from where? We can send a bunch of agents over there, but it'd be nice to narrow it down a bit. We don't even know what she looks like except a decade-old army ID photo. I'm gonna have to get in touch with the NSA and see if they're willing to tell me where the call originated. Knowing them, they'll claim keeping it secret is a matter of national security and I'll have to get Yarrow involved.”
He stopped, picturing the bureaucratic struggle that threatened to fill the next twenty-four hours. He suspected it would be as much fun as a prostate exam, but then he amended the thought. That characterization was far too positive. But he'd do it, and hope that maybe they'd catch a real break.
“Good work. Give me the file and I'll take care of it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
December 12th, 2012: Over the Gulf of Mexico
Cimil opened his eyes to see the larger of the two bodyguards hovering over him. He'd dreamed of a great stepped pyramid deep in the Guatemalan jungle. The jungle was aflame, and Cimil bounded up the steps trying to outrun the inferno that threatened to overtake him. As he made his way skyward, so did the flames. He reached the platform at the top. The lack of fuel on the stone steps didn't seem to slow the fire. He looked out over the jungle and could see nothing but orange and black. Then he awoke.
“ K'uk Ajaw, you need to take this call.”
Shaking off sleep, he took the phone. Even at thirty-seven thousand feet somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, he was never out of touch. “What is it?”
“It's Andrea. She's gone.”
All traces of lethargy vanished, and Cimil leaned forward in his seat, as if somehow he could get more information in that position. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Well, you told us to keep an eye on her movements. This morning she took a truck and headed down the mountain. We couldn't exactly barrel after her or she'd see us, but a couple of contacts in the villages confirmed she went towards the highway. Someone else picked up her tail there. She headed to the airport and took off about half an hour ago. She's flying to Baltimore in the United States, arriving at 4:57PM”
Cimil's fingers tightened around the phone. He took a single deep breath.
“Is there any more?”
“Well, she barely got there in time for her flight. We did manage to see which plane she got on. I checked with the airlines and none of the flights had her name or the aliases we know about. But that's not surprising, she probably has a dozen passports. We questioned the people at the airline and at security, and one of them recognized her picture. But they didn't remember the name.”
“How sure are you that she's on this plane?”
“Well, Maria was tailing her and she watched Andrea get on. Then she watched until it took off. So we're as sure as we can be without actually having someone on board.”
“OK, good work. I'll take it from here. Is everything ready for my return tomorrow?”
“Of course. We may get questions from a few guys about Andrea's absence, but it'll be easy enough to say she's overseas working on something for you.”
“All right. Call me if anything else comes up.”
He flipped the phone shut. Damn, this wasn't what he needed right now. She couldn't derail his plan, but she could create more pressure than he wanted.
But wait … He looked at his watch and considered the possibilities. That just might work. He felt a surge of adrenaline as he reminded himself that in mere hours, he'd take the first active step in bringing about the Fifth World. Why not take care of this little problem in the meantime?
He stood up and stretched his arms over his head. The Gulfstream G500 provided more than ample height to accommodate this. The plush seats and extra room in the Executive Layout felt more like a board room than an airplane. He headed up to the cockpit and tapped the co-pilot on the shoulder. A grin spread across the man's face, more sycophancy than pleasure, but Cimil didn't care.
“Pablo, we have a small course change. I want you to change our flight plan to go to Baltimore.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
December 12th, 2012: Baltimore, Maryland
Simon waited near the security checkpoint at Baltimore Washington International Airport. He'd already witnessed several streams of passengers making their way out of the secure area. Andrea Schmidt's flight was thirty-five minutes early, so she'd be coming any minute, unless the plane needed to wait for the gate to open up or some other such delay. He didn't want to chance missing her, and he wanted to catch her before she got to the baggage area.
The whole situation made him uncomfortable. Simon had experienced his share of covert operations, but no undercover work. He'd generally had missions where he could clearly identify the enemy. Now, he didn't know if he was walking into a trap.
He'd scoured the file on Andrea Schmidt, but it contained precious little useful data. A former soldier turned mercenary, perhaps even assassin. Someone without any loyalties at all, even to her clients. Her loyalty was to the job at hand and to herself.
He entertained no thoughts of skipping the meet, though. The upside could be the most valuable intelligence on Cimil ever collected. Simon had his own reasons for wanting that. The potential downside would be capture, and possibly even death. That wouldn't happen in the airport itself, so he would have to make sure that whatever she suggested they do, he steered them in another direction. He also reminded himself that she might very well harbor similar suspicions about him.
Ninety seconds later she came into view, carrying a tattered beige backpack and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with a denim jacket tied around her waist. Headphones snaked down from her ears into some sort of music player in her pocket. Simon smiled at the image. No one would have guessed that the apparent All-American girl was in fact a lethal killer.
“Hey there, great to see you.” He stood up and offered his hand. She probably could kill him with her bare hands, but he figured it wouldn't happen right next to a bunch of armed security.
She forced a smiled and took it. The most natural thing in the world, meeting someone at an airport.
“Good of you to meet me. Let's go get my bag.”
They headed down an escalator. Neither wanted to go first, and eventually Andrea shrugged and took the lead. They made their way to a carousel, where her flight number from Miami was displayed in red digital numbers. She put her hands on her hips and spoke as she watched the bags start to make their way around.
“Let me guess, you don't trust me?”
“Let's just say I have a healthy survival instinct.”
“Yeah, well, the feeling's mutual. No surprise there.”
Simon shook his head and remained silent.
“Well, I'm the one that started this. The thing is, our friend has some very disturbing plans.”
“I gathered that. He's gonna use the weapons, isn't he?”
Andrea stepped up to the belt and removed her bag, a large hiking pack complete with metal frame for stability. She stuffed her smaller pack into it and put the big pack on her back, and Simon eyed it with approval.
She said, “Always good to keep as much mobility as possible. And yes he is. In fact, it's supposed to happen—”
Yum Cimil and his two massive bodyguards strode directly toward them. Simon moved towards the door. The bitch had double-crossed him. Out of the corner of his right eye, he saw Cimil pick up his pace, but neither he nor his two goons seemed inclined to run. Simon squeezed past a woman with two small children standing in front of the doorway and felt the sudden rush of twenty degree air on his face and arms.
He looked behind him and and saw Andrea thirty yards back. He sprinted across the street and headed towards the parking garage.
“Simon, wait, I can explain!”
Simon pondered wheth
er to turn around when he heard Andrea yell. He could feel the ceramic gun inside his jacket pocket, one of Braxton's little toys. He hadn't planned on entering any secure areas, but it never hurt to be prepared for a change in plans when working in an airport. As soon as they were both in the shadows inside the huge concrete structure, he stopped and whirled to face Andrea, gun steady in his left hand.
“I bet you can. How do you explain Cimil showing up right when I was supposed to meet you at baggage?”
“Obviously he found out what I was doing.”
“Obviously?”
“Look, just hear me out. Cimil is setting off the nukes tomorrow.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“I'm unarmed. You can either wait fifteen more seconds until Cimil catches us and then you'll find out for sure, or we can get to your car and escape. I'll drive, you can hold the gun on me. But make up your frigging mind.”
They stared at each other. Two killers. Maybe allies, maybe enemies. Certainly not friends. Finally, Simon lowered his gun. “What the hell, let's go.” Andrea followed him at a fast run up several flights of stairs and past rows of cars on the third floor.
Cimil watched them enter the stairwell, and he picked up his pace. By the time he opened the door to it, Andrea and Simon had disappeared. He cursed in Mayan, something about an egregious physical violation of the feathered serpent.
“Anibal, Estuardo, they have to be on two, three or four. We'll split up—I'll take floor three. Stay in touch with the cell phone headsets. Switch 'em all on right now.”
Their communications established, they went on their way.
One other man watched them from the shadows. He brought his phone to his ear.
The Mayan Legacy (A Simon Gray Thriller Book 1) Page 15