Ibrahim’s training had taught him not to be overly friendly with American police, but not to be belligerent either. “Here,” he said. “I go to school at UT. My apartment isn’t far.” If asked, he was prepared to show both a university ID and a Texas driver’s license with an address only slightly off from the actual location.
The cop looked at him for a moment, an endless moment in Ibrahim’s mind, then said, “Get off the street and go home. It’s dangerous out here.”
Ibrahim gave a nod as the cop turned away, his eyes flicking longingly toward the big stadium. He wouldn’t even have needed to get inside (and couldn’t, since bags were inspected at the outer gates, and that certainly couldn’t be allowed) only detonate in the crowds gathering outside. Even from there, the force of the blast would take care of the massive structure and everyone inside. Well, he had a secondary target, and didn’t turn in its direction until he had gone back the way he’d come and was out of the policeman’s sight.
It took about an hour to walk there. On his way he saw a few cars and hurrying pedestrians, but the streets were essentially empty, lacking the buzz of a major American city. The absence of traffic wasn’t the only thing out of place. There were unattended bodies lying on sidewalks, drawing flies. How bad had this plague become? Ibrahim ached to watch the news, check the internet to see how much damage it was causing to his enemies, but he had to focus on the mission. He didn’t even dare pull something up on his phone (had in fact left it behind) because he had been warned about what a stray electrical signal might do to the thing on his back. A very thin chance, but not worth risking, not after the operation had come this far. Besides, bodies lying in the streets of Dallas told him what he needed to know.
And it made him worry about his secondary target before he ever arrived.
He needed crowds for maximum shock value, and his new destination – the city’s passenger rail station – should have provided that. From more than a block away however, he realized this wouldn’t work either. Like the stadium it was closed, and here there were not only police but some soldiers as well. Ibrahim didn’t even attempt an approach. He moved on.
There was no third target. The idea that both the stadium and the train station would be unviable just hadn’t been considered. Ibrahim’s backpack weighed heavy on him, an opportunity that might now never come. For a moment he thought about returning to the apartment for guidance, but quickly dismissed the idea. That would be shameful, an admission of failure and a reason for those controlling the operation to select a more worthy martyr for the delivery. Besides, when he left the handler had been sitting in a chair, staring glassy-eyed at a wall, a thin trickle of drool escaping his lips. Lost in religious fervor, no doubt. He would not be pleased to see Ibrahim anywhere outside paradise.
No, he would complete his mission. He knew where to go, a place sure to be both crowded and with easy access. He changed directions.
Another hour of walking empty streets saw the time for the simultaneous detonations come and go. Certainly his brothers were with Allah already, but the thought caused him to frown. He heard the sound of sirens seeming to float from every direction, but they were scattered, lonely sounds, not the concentrated frenzy of first-responders converging on a major blast in a population center. And he would have seen pillars of black smoke from one or both of the others. The skies above Dallas were blue and peaceful. Could they all have failed? No. Ibrahim would not fail.
A few more moving cars loaded with people fleeing the city, and he smelled a fire somewhere but saw no flames or smoke. There were signs of looting, more dead bodies in the street, and at one point his journey was almost cut brutally short. In front of an apartment building Ibrahim stumbled upon a young woman in a bloody dress, her blond hair clotted against her face. She’d been handcuffed by one wrist to a wrought iron sidewalk planter and was standing over the corpse of a Dallas police officer. The woman, eyes bright and silvery, snarled and lunged, almost caught hold of Ibrahim’s plaid shirt but was jerked back short by the handcuff.
Ibrahim ran away from her, and a throaty chuckling followed him.
Part of the young man’s training had required that he study and memorize the geography of the city, and so without a map or GPS he unerringly reached the new target location. A determined smile crossed his face as he saw the parking lots surrounding the large building clogged with people and ambulances. The hospital was clearly filled beyond capacity, because medical staff was conducting triage and examinations out in the lot as hundreds lined up, hoping to get inside. They wore painter’s masks and held their children close, many of them watching images on their cell phones, a general horror on their faces. There were policemen here too, but they appeared to have given up any attempt to organize the crowd and simply stood to the side, watching.
No one challenged or delayed him as he and his backpack moved slowly into the parking lot and into the thick of the crowd. High profile, big crowds, wide open access... The perfect target.
Ibrahim realized that he was sweating, and a wave of nausea brought him to a halt, stomach cramps suddenly doubling him over. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, waiting for the sensation to pass.
Nerves? Excitement with a touch of fear? He shook his head, but when he opened his eyes his vision was cloudy, the shapes around him distorted. What was this place? Hospital, that was it. Had he come here because he was sick? Hard to remember. The mission. The mission, go inside and carry out the mission.
Ibrahim took a few steps in the direction of the entrance and stopped again as he was hit by withering nausea once more. He leaned against the trunk of a car.
So hard to focus. Need a doctor. No! You are about to meet God! But for some reason he couldn’t remember God’s name. After more than half an hour of leaning in that one spot and staring, Ibrahim couldn’t remember anything anymore. People moved past and ignored him, and the would-be martyr took no notice. His arms dangled limp at his sides, a grayish drool slipping from his lips. Ibrahim chuckled at nothing in particular.
And then, as was typical of Phase-Twos about to turn, his hands began the reflexive motor activity of clenching and unclenching.
A flash of white that was hotter than the sun. A pressure wave of incomparable heat. Ibrahim, the hospital, everyone and everything in a four block radius vaporized. A black and gray mushroom cloud boiled up into the clear Dallas sky as radioactive particles took to the wind.
Dallas burned.
There was no one to put out the fires.
Long Island, New York
Wagner Davis lay naked in his king-sized bed, the satin sheets in a tangle at his feet from the latest round of violating Amber. He watched the sun come up through a wall of windows down one side of the bedroom. Of course he had to watch it come up over the roofs of the seaside houses across the street. His own house, at just over six thousand square feet, was a monument to luxury architecture, tasteful stone and glass with professional landscaping and a five-car garage housing three Porches. Impressive. The equal to those houses across the street in every way but one. Where he could see the water, they were on the water, and that fact left a taste in his mouth so bitter that even the finest sunrise in the Hamptons couldn’t wash it away.
“Fuckers,” he muttered, reaching for the small mirror on the nightstand and snorting a quick line. It was only a moderate habit, and he could certainly afford it. With a gasp he dropped back into the pillows and looked up at the ceiling.
Amber. Where had the little slut disappeared to? Right, she’d gone to take that annoying little dog of hers for a quick walk. He hated that nasty little dog, but Amber was nastier and in a good way. The thought of her taut, perfect body moving against him, of her willingness to indulge in any perversion made him stiffen.
“Hurry up with that dog,” he muttered. She made Viagra unnecessary, but he took it anyway just to make things interesting. On his taxes he had her listed as an executive assistant only because personal freak wasn’t an allowable deduction.<
br />
Elsa didn’t know about Amber. Well, she probably did, or at least suspected there was an Amber-type, but she didn’t care. Elsa had her own money (her family imported diamonds) and her own boy-toys. She was in Tel-Aviv right now, no doubt fucking one of them. Or two. Elsa had a thing for taking on young Israeli soldiers two at a time. She also had a thing for her black American Express card and anorexia. Wagner didn’t care either. They had their arrangement, and didn’t get in each other’s way.
And his part of the arrangement had better get her tight little ass back in this bed, he thought, stiffening further. For some reason, the image of his wife with other men was almost as arousing as thinking about Amber. He guessed he was a freak, too.
But his erection quickly softened as he looked out at those houses across the street, the ones on the water where he should be. Those people had real money (Spielberg lived up the block), unlike Wagner, and it made him clench his fists. One of the elite of Wall Street, a premier broker with more than a hundred million in investments and seventeen million liquid, it still wasn’t real money. He still worked.
“Fuckers,” he said again, climbing out of bed and pulling on his robe. On his way out of the bedroom he picked up the chrome .45 automatic from where it sat next to his cocaine mirror. Things were fucked out there, and he didn’t go anywhere without the pistol, not even in his own home. He was safe enough out here though, he supposed. The grounds were walled with a high gate, the house had a first-class security system, and besides, nothing bad ever really happened out in the Hamptons. But better to carry insurance.
Wagner didn’t believe in God, but thank Him that this crazy outbreak had exploded over the weekend or he would have been caught in Manhattan when it went down. The thought of being trapped in that madness – millions of people packed together and tearing each other apart – made him shudder.
He padded barefoot down the carpeted stairs and into the foyer, seeing the front door standing wide open. His assistant’s stupid little dog stood trembling in a corner, the leash still attached to its collar and a puddle of urine on the floor beneath it.
“Ah, goddammit, Amber,” he yelled. “Your fucking dog pissed in the house again and I’m not cleaning it up!”
Wagner’s gardener Jesus (or Jose, or fucking Pancho, he couldn’t remember) walked through the open front door and came right at the stock broker, teeth bared and a snarl rising from his throat as he reached.
“Jesus!” Wagner cried, calling the Lord’s name, not his gardener’s, and shot the man in the chest at a range of three feet, right through the heart. A blast of thick, pink snot blew out the man’s back and splattered against a wall. The gardener dropped. “Jesus!” Wagner shouted again.
Amber, naked beneath an open silk robe, burst from the adjacent living room and hit Wagner hard, slamming him to the floor and bouncing his head off the marble. He cried out, squeezed the automatic’s trigger and blew off half of his own right foot.
Growling, Amber clawed her way up his legs and sank her teeth into his scrotum, ripping it away like she was pulling a weed in the garden.
Wagner screamed, but not for very long.
Jakarta, Indonesia
Rivers of death. That’s what it looked like from the air; masses of bodies streaming through the streets below, hunting and killing while many of the buildings they flowed between burned, sending pillars of black smoke into the sky. The government had decided that fire was the best way to deal with this, and dispatched Army flamethrower units into the streets. It had only succeeded in accelerating the inevitable. Smoke curled back through the helicopter’s rotors as bodies plummeted from the broken windows of skyscrapers, while still more clustered on rooftops praying for an airborne rescue that would never come.
Indonesia’s capital city was lost.
The helicopter was a British-made Sea King with civilian markings, once military like the men riding inside. Most had been Australian Special Forces, former SAS operators who now worked as private contractors. They preferred that label over mercenaries. Having streaked in from the sea, the chopper slowed now as it flew over the infested city, the pilot adjusting course as he angled toward the destination coordinates.
Bags, the team leader and Ocker, his second, looked down through the open side door at the carnage below. They wore sand-colored fatigues and combat gear, automatic weapons slung across their chests, and spoke to each other through headsets so as to be heard above the roar of wind and rotors.
“It’s a dog’s breakfast down there,” said Ocker.
“Yeah,” said Bags, nodding. “Little brownies tearing the place up proper.”
The same was true back in Sydney, of course, they’d all seen it. But they weren’t going back to Sydney. A remote medical research lab in New Zealand was their final destination, at least until the next contract. By the look of things, that wouldn’t take long. Men with their skill-set would be much in demand.
Ocker looked back at the other five men in the troop compartment, all similarly dressed and armed. His eyes settled on the newest member of the team, a kid from Perth who was former Army, but never part of an SAS team. It was something that didn’t sit well with the men. Operators didn’t do the hiring, but if the kid didn’t carry his weight, they had their own ways of getting him out of the team. The kid’s eyes met Ocker’s, then darted away and came back. It was his first time out with this group. Ocker gave him a toothy smile and turned back to his friend.
“The grommet looks about to piss himself, mate.”
Bags smirked. “Reckon that makes him the smartest one of the bunch.”
“We need to be smart for this? That wasn’t in the brochure.”
The helicopter closed on an eight story building ahead, and the pilot called over the radio headset. “Two minutes.”
Bags nodded and held up two fingers to his men, who began tightening their gear and inspecting their weapons one last time.
“He’s supposed to be on the roof, right?” said Ocker.
A laugh from the team leader. “Right. And there’s a fair go that he listened.”
Ocker made a face. “Beauty.”
The Sea King slowed, flared and swung its tail to the left, then landed with a bump on the rooftop helipad. A rooftop that was empty of people. The contractors leaped from the chopper and gathered into what looked like a rugby huddle.
“You know where we are,” Bags shouted. “Probably the most dangerous place in any city right now. Keep sharp, mates.”
They nodded and dispersed. Bags grabbed one of the men by the shoulder, a man who had caught the nickname “Dunny” after an incident in a Taiwanese strip club involving a prostitute, a baby alligator and a men’s room.
“You’re on rooftop security,” Bags shouted over the rapid WHUP-WHUP-WHUP of the rotors. He pointed at a door that would lead to a stairwell. “Anyone who comes out of there who isn’t us, you cut ‘em down, no questions, no waiting to see if they’re infected.”
Dunny nodded, knelt at the edge of the helipad and trained an automatic weapon on the rooftop door of Pondak Indah Hospital, the biggest medical facility in the city.
“Coms up?” Bags said into his throat mic. He received a “copy” from each team member. Then they were moving, passing through the door and down a narrow concrete stairwell lit by the occasional emergency light. Bags took the lead, the muzzle of his MP-5 moving everywhere his head turned. They descended single-file, rubber-soled boots soft on the concrete steps.
“Seventh floor,” he whispered.
As quiet as they were, the stairwell was not silent. A metallic banging followed by a chorus of howls echoed up from below. Small flashlights attached to gun barrels switched on as they continued their descent, the team leader checking each turn in the stairway before moving. A big, blue 7 on the wall beside an open door made them pause. “Ocker,” Bags said, and his friend moved past him, down to the mid-floor landing between six and seven. “In position,” he called a moment later.
Bags
led them through the seventh floor door and into a carpeted hallway. According to his briefing and the schematics he’d reviewed before mission launch, this floor was made up only of labs and offices, no patient areas. It was a small comfort, knowing that right under their feet was a massive building absolutely packed with former sick people, now wild-eyed cannibals. He pointed to the new kid, said “Grommet” and pointed at the floor by the door. The kid took his position. Bags led the other two men of his group to the left, and soon heard voices speaking low and fast in another language, saw shadows moving across the floor of a larger area as someone passed in front of an emergency light.
There were seven Indonesians, a mix of men and women in white lab coats, gathered in a wide hallway with a bank of elevator doors behind them. They jumped at the appearance of the three armed men.
“Doctor Wulandari?” Bags said. One of them, a man in eyeglasses with close-cropped black hair shot with gray, raised a tentative hand. He wore a laptop bag and a soft-sided red cooler on straps that crossed his chest, and carried a doctor’s satchel in the other hand. “I am Wulandari,” he said.
“You were supposed to be on the roof,” said Bags. “Alone.” His two men split to cover the wide hallway in both directions.
“We…we heard noises in the stairwell.” He shook his head.
“No shit. This bloody place is crawling with laughers. Time to go, Doctor.” Bags motioned to the hallway behind him, but when the entire group started to move he held up a hand. “Just you, mate.”
Wulandari stopped. “No. My team must go with me.”
“Sorry, not part of the package. The helicopter’s chockers anyway.”
“No,” Wulandari repeated. “The World Health Organ-”
“The WHO contracted for you, mate,” Bags said. “No one else. Now tick-tock, time to leave.”
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