Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  Sad, Gordian thought. But thanks to the greyhound rescue people and Julia, things had vastly changed for them. And would change even more for those particular greyhounds when their corral was built and they could gallop around outdoors to their hearts’ content.

  He turned, ready for his next go at the fence. The pile of forty boards he’d set out for himself this morning had dwindled to a mere ten spread neatly across the grass. Now that today’s section had started to take definite shape, he could scarcely wait to get the rest of them up.

  Gordian was stooping to lift an armload of boards when the lightheadedness washed over him again. He flashed hot and cold. His heart fluttered irregularly, then began to pound.

  He took several deep breaths. The gritty rattle in his throat wasn’t any comfort, but he soon grew steadier and felt the pounding in his chest subside.

  Within seconds, the spell was over. Gordian knelt on the lawn, his head clear again. Still, he couldn’t keep on like this. He would have to get himself checked out. He’d call the doctor tomorrow morning, try to squeeze in an appointment for the same day. He was confident as ever that he wasn’t suffering from anything more serious than a nasty cold. Maybe a touch of the flu. But it couldn’t just be disregarded ad infinitum.

  He glanced over at the porch. Julia remained involved with her cuts of fish, shifting and flipping them over the flame with her spatula. She hadn’t noticed his little episode. Good. He’d pretty much recovered and was thinking he could mount the rest of the boards in twenty minutes, tops. Close that space. Then he’d quit. Grab one of those lawn chairs, relax in the sunshine. And wait for Ash.

  He gathered half the siding boards on the ground, carried them to the fence posts where he’d be working, and squatted to get the lowermost board in place. Then he took the drill from his holster, checked to see that the screwdriver bit was firmly in the chuck, pulled his goggles over his eyes, and reached into his pouch for a screw.

  His power tool slugged the screw into the wood easily, its fat motor startling the birds out of a nearby tree with its racket.

  The board went on without a snag. Gordian reached for the next one, positioned it, and was about to squeeze the drill’s trigger switch when he heard Julia calling him: “Dad!”

  He looked over his shoulder and saw her approaching across the lawn. She was outfitted in black capri pants, espadrilles, and a sleeveless blue midriff blouse that precisely matched the color of her eyes. And Gordian’s eyes as well, though it was not something he noticed at that moment.

  What he was noticing was the tight, controlled expression on her face. The overdone casualness of her stride.

  He braced himself as she reached him.

  “Time for a break. We’ll be eating soon,” she said in a flat, clipped tone.

  “Hey Dad, you’re doing a fantastic job!” Gordian thought. “I couldn’t have expected better from a professional carpenter!”

  He raised his goggles and regarded her from his crouch.

  “I’m almost finished with this side of the corral,” he said. “Your mother hasn’t even arrived yet…”

  She shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d want to wash up before she gets here.”

  “You’re the greatest, Dad! I love you! Jack and Jill love you! We all love you like mad! I honestly don’t know what we’d do without you being around!”

  Gordian tried not to look set upon. He felt a burr in his throat and cleared it to stave off a cough.

  “Her car just left the airport half an hour ago, and you can imagine what the roads are like today,” he said, wondering if his voice sounded as weak and croaky as it seemed. “We should have plenty of time…”

  Her gaze flogged him.

  “Okay,” she said. “Whatever.”

  Baffled, Gordian watched her turn away and walk back toward the house. It struck him to call after her, ask her to help him understand the nature of his current transgression, but he thought it might just provoke an argument. He decided the wisest thing to do was concentrate on his undertaking, keep his distance, and maintain a frail peace until Ashley arrived.

  Gordian managed that with considerable success. He attached the rest of the boards he’d carried from the shrinking pile and then brought over the five that were left, all without getting into knots about Julia’s inexplicable attitude.

  Then he was on his last board. He aligned it between the posts with a swell of anticipation and squeezed the trigger of the drill. It whined to life in his hand—

  And then the dizziness overtook him in a surge that almost spilled Gordian off his feet. He staggered drunkenly, his gorge heaving into his throat, rancid and scalding. His vision went gray around the edges, and then the grayness spread over everything, and he felt his body go loose, the drill jolting in his right hand. He experienced a hot, piercing pain in his opposite hand an instant before releasing his grip on the power tool’s trigger. Just as the gray turned to black, he saw a bright splash of redness gush from the burning spot from the wandering drill bit.

  “Dad!”

  Julia. Calling him from somewhere at a distance. Her tone of voice so different than it had been only minutes before.

  “Dad, Daddy, oh no, oh my God, DADDY—”

  Lost in darkness, spinning in a whirlpool of darkness, he felt every part of himself melting away, turning to liquid, rushing into the ground.

  It’s all right, hon, please don’t sound so scared, Gordian thought he heard himself say.

  In fact, the words never had a chance to leave his mouth.

  FOURTEEN

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA NOVEMBER 14, 2001

  The body of Felix Quiros did not quite go to the rodents. Nor was it exactly found by other members of the Quiros clan.

  His executioner would later be amused to hear that they split the difference.

  First cousins to one another, third cousins to Felix on opposite sides of his lineage, foremen at his auto salvage yard, and low-level functionaries in the criminal family business, Cesar and Jorge were far from quick to attach his three-day absence from the yard to the notion that any harm had come to him, and even slower to associate it with the scuttling, scratching noise they heard down the aisle of junkers.

  Every so often, Felix would shoot down across the border to those Tijuana bars where the young putas came three for the price of one, bring them to a hotel room, turn them on to some dope or ecstasy, get fucked up, and drop out of sight for days on end. Cesar and Jorge were well aware of his bad habits and guessed they had been the guys taking care of the scrapyard’s daily operations ever since Enrique handed it to Felix in an attempt to give him a firm set of responsibilities and keep him from running into trouble, but he’d kept on doing it anyway. Just let him get his hands on a little cash, and you could count on him going no-show until he’d blown every cent of it looking for degenerate kicks.

  Felix was here, he wasn’t here, Cesar and Jorge didn’t think it was of much consequence either way. They knew about their own obligations. They had the keys and entry combinations to every part of the scrapyard and usually found that it was less trouble to manage things without his high-hat bullshit. When he’d asked them to participate in that score connected with the Salazars’ goods from Mexico, they’d told him he was a maniac and refused. Because Felix was the illegitimate son of Enrique’s sister, Cesar and Jorge kept from voicing their opinions of him except between themselves, though the pair had a strong feeling that whatever they thought about the twit was hardly anything that wouldn’t have occurred to his uncle a hundred times, and that nobody would have faulted them too much for anything they said. Still, you had to observe certain proprieties.

  When Cesar finally noticed the sounds at around noon, it barely aroused his interest. A dumping ground like this, acre upon acre littered with decaying vehicles filled with half-eaten hot dogs, burritos, candy bars, Twinkies, ice cream cones, soft drink containers, and other rotting trash people left inside them, a place like this was home to every sort of creature yo
u could name. And then some. After a while, you didn’t actually have to see them to know which ones were nearby. You could identify them just by the sounds they made.

  That scratchy rustle, Cesar immediately knew it was a sign of rats. Some people, ones who didn’t have the same experience with them as Cesar, who didn’t spend as much of their goddamn lives around them as Cesar, thought they mainly came out at night, but here in the yard you could expect them to appear at any hour of the day. You got used to them being nuisances, used to seeing them dart between the cars, used to hearing them scavenge for food. They’d crawl in through broken windows or holes in the undercarriages, even climb into the trunks and chew through the upholstery of the backseats to enter the junkers. Bring an egg sandwich from the luncheonette for breakfast, a gray, ugly fucker that was bigger and meaner than a Chihuahua was liable to catch a whiff, come right out into the open, right into your trailer or shed if there was a space wide enough for it to crawl through. Sit there staring at you with the shiny beads of its eyes like it expected you to hand over the food. At a certain point, Cesar and Jorge had got to chucking empty beer and soda cans at the rats to scare them away, but some were so bold they’d stay right where they were unless you caught them smack in the head, rearing up on their hind legs, baring their white needle teeth like they were daring you to take another pitch, give it your goddamn best. Finally, Jorge started shooting them on sight when they get too close… and not with a BB gun, either. Jorge, he’d hit them with rounds from his nine mil, bam, bam, bam. Said that someday he would come in with an Uzi and chop away at the bastards until every last one was blown to pieces.

  So it didn’t seem exceptional at first, that sound. This was a little after twelve noon, maybe eighty degrees out, a warm day for November, the sun baking straight down on the wrecks to recook the spoiled food and crap inside them, raising a stink into the air that got the rats salivating. You could spend the rest of the day trying to scatter them, banging new dents into the already battered auto bodies with bats and crowbars, risk getting bitten if you weren’t careful. And for what good reason?

  Bearing this in mind, Cesar was initially inclined to overlook the skritch-scratch of their claws and the gnawing of their teeth, having been headed toward the office trailer for the phone number of this guy who repaired the heavy equipment, wanting to call him down to look at a forklift that had gone kaput.

  But then he’d hesitated and found himself turning toward the noise. No question, a lot of rats were making it. Very definitely a whole lot. It gave him the creeps, thinking about them teeming somewhere just out of sight behind the wall of cars. Maybe some other kind of animal had wandered into the yard and dropped dead. A bird, a cat, a fucking coyote, Christ only knew. It had happened in the past, and what you wanted to do in that case was clean things out, torch the car if need be, or before you knew it, a whole section of the yard would be swarming with all kinds of vermin. Worms, flies, maggots, a disgusting situation.

  So what Cesar had done was reach into his pocket for his flip phone, buzz Jorge over at the recycling plant, and tell him to haul ass over with his niner.

  It took him maybe ten minutes to show, a crowbar in his hand, his pistol in a belt holster under his hanging shirttails. And when he did, Jorge agreed Cesar’s feelings were merited.

  “Sounds to me like there’s a lot of goddamn rats back there,” he’d said, and passed the crowbar to Cesar. “Better clean it out or we gonna have some kind of infestation.”

  Which was, of course, almost word for word what Cesar himself had been thinking.

  The noise leading them forward, they inched their way between twisted front panels, jutting bumpers, partially unhinged doors, and fallen wheel covers. It was like being inside an oven here, heat shimmers above the stacked auto bodies. The scratching was very loud, and you could hear the rats squealing excitedly. And the stink, Jesus, that odor of broiling garbage was enough to make Cesar’s stomach clench.

  Suddenly Jorge grabbed his shoulder and steered him to the right. He had his gun in his free hand and was pointing it at the back of an old Buick sedan.

  But Cesar had already seen the rats. There had to be dozens of them. Fat ones with pale, slopping bellies that dragged underneath them. Smaller ones not much larger than mice. They were squirming over, under, and around the trunk. Crowding on its closed lid, climbing on each other’s backs, a frenzied jumble. They did not seem to notice the two men. Or maybe they were too worked up to care about them.

  A sound of horror and disgust wringing from his throat, Jorge swung his pistol downward and pumped three rounds into the carpet of rats on the ground. Cesar saw a rat explode as it flopped into the air. The rest that had been clustered near the rear wheels and bumper went scrambling away, but a few of them still clung to the trunk lid, pawing at its flaked, peeling finish.

  Jorge raised the gun and fired. Another burst of fur, blood, and guts. Something warm splashed Cesar’s cheek, and he winced with aversion. And then the rats were springing from the trunk, tumbling from it, scattering in every direction.

  “We gotta see what’s inside!” Jorge yelled, his face sweaty, gesticulating at the trunk with his niner.

  The crowbar against his thigh, Cesar stepped reluctantly toward the Buick. He glimpsed a hairless tail slip out of sight under its chassis, shuddered, and stopped.

  “Yo, c’mon, open the fuckin’ thing!”

  Cesar nodded without saying anything. He worked the flat end of the steel bar under the trunk lid between the latch and corroded rubber weatherstripping. Then he pushed down on the crowbar with both hands, using his full weight for leverage.

  It took very little prying to disengage the trunk’s rusted latch. The lid popped creakily.

  The stench that rose with the moist, warm air that had been trapped inside was sickening. Cesar gagged and clapped his palm over his nose and mouth. Then Jorge reached across his chest and pushed the lid open the rest of the way.

  They stared into the compartment as another blast of foulness gusted over them.

  The corpse was saturated in a reddish stew of blood and other juices. Its clothes were gummy, and the fluids had seeped into the trunk’s lining. Cesar and Jorge saw a pale hand, a bloated stomach under the scrunched-up shirt and jacket.

  Two large rats had managed to burrow through to the compartment. They withdrew their smeared, gummy snouts from inside what was left of the skull and squinted out into the bright daylight.

  The dead man might not have been recognizable except for his clothes. The same familiar clothes he’d been wearing when they’d last seen him.

  Their eyes wide, Cesar and Jorge exchanged a glance of shared incredulity.

  Felix Quiros’s whereabouts had been discovered, and Tijuana this sure as hell wasn’t.

  * * *

  Blood for blood. That was how he felt it had to be.

  Enrique Quiros sat alone in the San Diego office with the words Golden Triangle Services fronting the outer hallway, his designer glasses folded in his shirt pocket, elbows propped on his desk. He was leaning forward into his hands, eyes closed, the balls of his palms pressed against their lids.

  Never in his life had he felt so tired.

  It had been an hour since he’d returned from the salvage yard and seen the ghastly remains of his nephew. Dumped inside that trunk. Packed into that trunk with his own blood. And the smell. It seemed to linger in Enrique’s nostrils even now, so strong it was almost a taste at the back of his tongue. In his car driving back downtown, he had found an unopened roll of breath mints and popped one after another into his mouth, chewing each in seconds, crushing them between his teeth. That hadn’t helped. He’d stood by the car just briefly. A minute or less. But he thought the stench of Felix’s decomposing flesh would stay with him for a very long time to come.

  Head in hands, he massaged his eyes. On the desktop near his right arm was a small leather case that he had withdrawn from a concealed safe elsewhere in the office suite. Inside it was a plasti
c ampule and a wrapped, sterile syringe. His reward from El Tío for having relayed a matching kit to Palardy, and a sure means for revenge against the man culpable for his nephew’s death.

  Although Enrique was not a scientist, he had a solid layman’s understanding of the incredible biological weapon he’d been given. The clear liquid sealed inside the ampule was a neutral, harmless medium for transport and administration of the microscopic capsules suspended within. But a single drop held a concentration of hundreds, perhaps thousands of microcapsules. And since each of those capsules was a tiny bomblet packed with trigger proteins that would allow the Sleeper virus infecting every human being to “awaken,” that drop would be sufficiently potent to kill the target of an attack many times over. All that was required for the virus to mutate into its lethal form, attach itself to a specific genetic feature, and amplify, was its victim having a sip of water that had been implanted with the trigger, a bite of food… or, Enrique thought darkly, a mint of the sort he’d been crunching down in the car.

  And the fluid medium was only one among many methods of getting a trigger into the human body. If your desire was to take out a single individual, you could introduce it to whatever he was having for lunch. If you wanted to be rid of his family as well, you might inject their Thanksgiving turkey before the holiday dinner. Widen the bull’s-eye to include a larger group of people, and you’d distribute the trigger across a sweeping number of routes. Instead of the food on the table you could saturate an entire population’s food supply — and beyond. Spread it over their farm soil, dump it into their reservoirs, float it through the air they breathed. Turn their environment into an extension of your weapon.