Androcide (Intel 1 Book 5)

by Erec Stebbins

  “Sounds like a drug operation,” said Houston.

  Lightfoote frowned. “No. That’s not right. Sure, some of that stuff. But hospital equipment? Basic biotech research? What the hell? Drug lords don’t sequence DNA.”

  “They didn’t used to,” said Savas.

  Cohen shrugged. “We don’t know what we’re looking at. But it’s Nemesis, so it must be disruptive. As we’ve learned the hard way, she plays a very long game.”

  Lightfoote leaned back in her chair and put a combat boot up on the desk.

  “I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”

  45

  Stakeout

  “So this is staking out,” grumbled Lopez, drumming his fingers on the dash. “Can you verb that?”

  Savas suppressed a sigh. Four hours outside the main branch. To be honest, I’m not cut out for this anymore, either.

  They’d arranged things with the bank. Online access to the account was disabled. The mysterious account holder, the man in the pocket of one of the planet’s most dangerous individuals, had no other means to access that precious money. He had to show.

  “So, given all the presidential resources we’ve got at our fingertips, why are we here?”

  “You know why, Gabriel. Whoever is working for Nemesis is likely a professional killer. An assassin. Someone we can’t trust to just anyone. I’m not sure I should be here, but you’re our secret weapon. You’re the damn wrath of God.”

  “Lord grant mercy.”

  “And patience is a virtue. A little longer.”

  “Much longer and we’re going to need a solution to solution,” said Lopez. “What do you guys use? Gatorade bottles? I didn’t touch coffee. Some sips of water, but biology is biology.”

  “He’ll show,” said Savas. “Online withdrawals had a pattern, Angel found it. He’s overdue. We’ve forced his hand.”

  And on cue his cell vibrated.

  “Savas!” he answered. “Perfect. We’ll move in. Tell them not to—”

  The door of the bank burst open, sunlight flashing across them as the glass reflected the bright sun. A man in a fog coat and pulled down baseball cap raced out of the bank, sending pedestrians flying. He darted toward a nearby alleyway.

  “Damn!”

  They denied him the money, didn’t they? He turned the ignition. Idiots!

  “On foot!” yelled Lopez, the ex-priest’s door opening. “Subway line two blocks down!”

  He’s right.

  The car would just slow them down. He leapt out and slammed the door, turning to follow Lopez across the street. The blaring horn of a cab stopped him short, a yellow blur inches from his sidearm. Savas inhaled, scanned the street, and raced across.

  The chase was brief. Lopez stormed ahead, his broad back twisting like a pass-rusher pursuing a quarterback. The prey bobbed even farther in front, the man’s head higher than Lopez even at a distance.

  That is one tall man.

  People screamed as they rushed past, cell phones whipping out. He approached the next street and glimpsed the green sphere of the metro ahead. The baseball hat disappeared down a stairway next to it.

  “Don’t let him board!”

  Lopez didn’t respond, disappearing himself down the subway entrance.

  Savas gulped air, his mouth a parched desert. He reached the stairway, grasping a lamppost for support, catching his breath. A crowd pulled back from the entrance, their eyes wide.

  “FBI,” he gasped, giving them a practiced stare of reassurance.

  A gunshot shattered the calm. He drew his firearm and descended the stairs, his fatigue wrecking his balance. Sweat clouded his vision as he stepped into the underground station.

  I’m getting too old for this.

  NYPD officers entered from the opposite side. Their eyes locked with his, his gun raised toward the ceiling, his face dripping. They drew on him. He held up his false FBI identification, hoping that this afternoon wasn’t going to end with friendly fire.

  “FBI! Special Agent in Charge Thanasis Papavasiliou!” he shouted, praying he’d got the ID right in this madness.

  The officers approached with their guns trained on him.

  “Put the firearm on the ground! Now!”

  He put it down, going to his knees and holding up the ID. One of the officers grabbed it.

  “What the hell is this?” the policeman asked. “Saw two men run down toward the N train. Shots fired.”

  “Fugitive with terrorist connections. The tall one. FBI agent in pursuit. The short one.”

  “Jesus!” whispered the officer.

  A warm blast of air hit them, pushing up from the lower level.

  The train!

  “Let me through!” cried Savas.

  The man nodded to his partner, who handed Savas his firearm. He took it and stumbled over the turnstile, dashing down the stairs underneath a sign labeled “NQR.”

  Too late.

  Halfway down the deep roar of acceleration began, the repetitive clacking of the wheels over the tracks speeding up. He landed on the platform, his legs buckling, his gun arm shaky.

  The tube was empty. The receding glow of a subway car disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel.

  “He got on,” came a gasp from his right, around the stairway column.

  Savas turned to find Lopez against the wall, doubled over and holding his stomach. His weapon was on the ground several feet from him.

  “Francisco! Are you okay?”

  “Gabriel,” he wheezed. “Not okay. Not quite. Was waiting for me. I came down the stairs. Too fast,” he panted. “Should’ve been smarter. I got a shot off. His fist was faster.” Blood trickled along Lopez’s ear.

  “Your head?”

  “Lifted me off the ground with that hit. Slammed into the wall.”

  Jesus. Lopez was a heavy man. Muscular, broad. A short tank. For a man to have thrown him into a wall with a single blow?

  “Sorry,” said Lopez, rising and placing a hand on Savas. His voice grew in strength. “Knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t breathe. He got on board.” He grimaced. “We lost him.”

  Savas put his shoulder under Lopez’s arm, helping the man walk. The NYPD officers arrived with backup.

  There’s going to be a lot of explaining to do.

  Savas sighed. “I hope the ladies are having a better day.”

  46

  Holy Zombie Apocalypse, Batman

  Houston pulled the black car to a stop beside a block-spanning series of brick buildings in the Bronx. She pushed the dark sunglasses to her head, tufts of brown hair sprouting around the lenses. Piercing blues gazed out in their place, through the window.

  What a shit-hole.

  Riding shotgun, Lightfoote glanced between a smartphone and the building, popped a giant bubble, and sucked the gum in. The piercings running up her face and ears glinted in the afternoon sunlight.

  “You sure this is it?” Houston asked.

  “This is the address the shippers had.” She laughed. “Merchants seemed way too happy to tell us everything once we flashed ID and mentioned terrorism. It’s like a magic word. Opens a lot of doors. And addresses.”

  “And jail cells.”

  Lightfoote smirked. “I guess you’d know. That’s my point. Fear-factor has the whole system screwed.” Her gaze darted through the window. “But, yeah. This is a dump. Why ship products from reputable medical distribution centers at biotech prices to what looks like a gunrunners’ warehouse?” She popped the door open and spit her gum to the curb. “I’m very interested to see what’s going on.”

  Houston exited the vehicle, scanning the deserted streets. Windblown refuse and dilapidated cars populated the block. Houston wasn’t taking any chances, either with local criminals or with some unexpected killers working with Nemesis. Her Browning 1911 bulged on her left side, her boots stiff from sheathed knives. She’d seen Lightfoote holster a Glock.

  The girl kills just as well with her hands and feet. Or her brain.
>
  “Loading dock’s open for business,” said Lightfoote. A black leather coat and cargo pants lent her the appearance of a worker on a cigarette break.

  Houston motioned toward the middle of the block. A large metal door opened in a four-story brick monolith.

  “No one outside. No signs. No logos. They don’t advertise much.”

  Lightfoote cast her a sharp stare, and the pair strode toward the ramp and opened entrance. They crossed the street and jogged up a set of stairs, entering the building without seeing a soul.

  Inside was a different story. Workers darted back and forth, carting boxes and crates through two broad passageways. Down the halls, Houston saw steel cages with multiple levels, each holding rows on rows of boxes.

  “Hey!” cried a heavyset man with a clipboard, ambling over from a forklift. “Who the hell are you? This is private property!”

  Houston flashed a fake FBI ID - how sweet that felt - and decided to cast the spell, looking to the nametag on his shirt.

  “Terrorists, Mr. Kogan.”

  Lightfoote choked back a laugh.

  “Terrorists?” came the hoarse reply.

  “Special Agent Mary Borden with my assistant, Jane McKeegan. FBI.”

  The half-shaven foreman stared at Lightfoote. “She’s a girl?”

  Lightfoote winked at him.

  “We’re pursuing a lead. Highly suspicious packages were delivered to this address, Mr. Kogan.”

  His eyes widened. “Bombs?”

  “These terrorists are capable of anything, sir,” said Lightfoote, who pressed herself against the foreman. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Anything.”

  Kogan pulled back, his eyes darting between Lightfoote and Houston.

  “Look, we’re just a storage facility. We get packages. We store them. We don’t ask questions.”

  “The law requires you ask certain questions, Mr. Kogan,” said Houston. He licked his lips. She shoved a piece of paper with a number on it in his face. “I need to see this location.”

  He took the paper, sweat beading on his upper lip. “Yeah, sure. No problem. No problem. This here’s one of the sheds in the back.”

  “Sheds?”

  “Yeah. Some clients store a lot, or want more privacy.” He forced a smile.

  “We’d like immediate access to that shed by authority of Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act, domestic terrorism. Will you allow us access?”

  Foreman Kogan retrieved a small electronic device and ushered them through the cavernous central storage facility. They continued out a back doorway to the interior of the block. There, surrounded by monotonous red brick on all sides, a grid of metal sheds rusted. Most were subdivided into separate, private storage rooms. He led them to one of the few standing apart with a single lift and slide door. The number 441 glinted above it.

  “Here it is,” he said, aiming the controller at the unit and keying in a code. The door rattled and slid upward, tucking itself into the ceiling of the trailer-sized shed. “I don’t need to see what’s inside,” he said, walking to the side. “Don’t want to see.”

  The interior was dark. Houston felt for a switch on the side wall and pressed a button. Fluorescent lighting bathed the crowded space.

  “It’s a damn hospital junkyard,” said Lightfoote.

  Houston gazed over the equipment, most of it covered in plastic or still boxed in wooden crates. She recognized some items. Vital sign monitors, gurneys, IV stands. Others she didn’t, but they radiated a clinical function.

  But shapes pulled her eyes elsewhere.

  “Holy Zombie Apocalypse, Batman.” Lightfoote whistled.

  Biohazard suits dangled from racks like radioactive fashion statements. Houston shivered. The plastic face guards, goggles, gloves, and boots possessed a nightmarish gravitational pull on the psyche. Lightfoote moved toward them.

  “Careful!” hissed Houston.

  “Doubt there’s Ebola in here, Agent McKeegan.” She touched the suits, twisting them back and forth. “No. Not in here, anyway. But who’s playing outbreak?”

  Houston swallowed. “We need to call this in.” She reached for her phone.

  “Ten-four.” Lightfoote read from the boxes. “Air filters. Double-door autoclave. Ultraviolet light passbox. Disinfectant dunk tank.” She gripped a thick curtain of plastic. “Lot of this all folded up. For containment, I’d bet.”

  The chill inside Houston reached the freezing point.

  “Containment? For what?”

  Lightfoote turned, her green eyes flashing like a cat’s.

  “Something pretty damn bad.”

  47

  R Naught

  A tone rang on the coffee machine, and a broad hand grasped the handle of the pot and lifted it toward a dark mug. Steam rose as the black liquid flowed, a chemical molecule drawn on the side of the mug changing from white to black and disappearing as the cup filled.

  A tall form turned to the window and drank, staring outside into the cold morning fog and downing half the hot fluid uninterrupted. An ironed white coat stretched across his broad shoulders. It matched a set of similar coats hanging from a bar along the wall. He placed the mug down, opened a new box of surgical masks, and headed toward a thick metal doorway embedded in the kitchen wall. He tapped a keypad, a metallic click sounded, and he yanked on the handle. The door shut behind him as he descended a flight of stairs.

  The cellar was dim compared to the windowed kitchen, long fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling failing to reproduce the full spectrum of sunlight. A mask obscured the man’s face, tufts of blond hair protruding from a cap worn on his head. At the bottom of the stairs, he passed a large waste container on the left filled with purple gloves. On the right was a table with a box of fresh gloves and a plastic face shield. He grabbed two gloves from the box, stuck his hands inside them, and lifted the face guard, fitting it over his head. The bright lights above reflected off the plastic, further concealing his face.

  In front gleamed a wall of plastic, the entrance a zippered gash down the middle. He grabbed the pull-tab, yanked the teeth apart from top to bottom, passed underneath, and zipped it shut. Inside the plastic, he pressed a button connected to a maze of tubes and dials out of some steampunk novel. A loud hiss of air rushed through the inner chamber along with a gas fog. After several seconds he unzipped the next chamber, entering and sealing that as well.

  Two layers inside, he approached a floor-bolted hospital gurney in the middle of an open partition. Plastic surrounded him. A dying creature twitched on the gurney, a naked man of indeterminate age, the final stages of a horrific metamorphosis rendering him alien and monstrous.

  His skin oozed, a mottled impact zone, bruising and burst vessels a macabre series of continuous tattoos covering him from head to foot. Blood pooled in many locations, the vasculature failing in some spectacular fashion, the tissues unable to hold themselves together. Crimson gel leaked from several orifices, the mouth, nose, eyes, and penis. The man’s lips drew back over bleeding gums and loose teeth.

  The form convulsed at the sound of the large form entering the space. A distorted whisper escaped him.

  “Kill me.”

  The figure covered in the biohazard gear stared at the battered body. Instruments around the form beeped in alarm. The killer straightened, his voice muffled.

  “I am sorry for your suffering,” the large man began, stepping around the figure and removing equipment and tools. “Your disease progression was unusually rapid. I didn’t think you would reach this level of morbidity until tomorrow. The hemorrhaging is particularly pronounced.” He sighed. “There is such patient to patient variability. It complicates my studies.”

  The near-corpse moaned as the man fitted a mask connected to a thick tube over his face. But he offered no resistance.

  “I do try to be as humane as possible, even if you do not deserve it.” He snapped the fittings of the mask in place, creating a tight seal. The dying man squirmed, generating little movement.

&nbs
p; “Don’t panic. It’s carbon dioxide. You’ll fall asleep and it will all end.”

  He reached with his gloved hand and opened a valve. A compressor churned with a soft hiss.

  “I haven’t thought of a way to present you to the world. My theatrics are draining time from research.” He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “In some ways, I shouldn’t bother. The new world that is coming will set its own priorities. Make its own histories. Determine your value and mine. But it’s hard not to preach. I’ve taken history into my own hands.”

  The form on the gurney relaxed. The muscles stopped twitching. One arm fell to the side and hung motionless.

  “But I simply can’t get the statistics required! I can’t know the real value of r naught. It underlies everything.” The lights and sounds on the monitors climbed to a panicked state. “Simulations tell me I’m in the right order of magnitude with some confidence. But if I’m wrong, too low, if I don’t seed enough patient zeros, there won’t be full penetration through the population. There will be a recovery. The revolution will never occur.”

  The monitors flatlined. There was a warning tone. He reached over and silenced it.

  “Not that it will matter to you.” He stared downward. “How many women did you abuse? How many have we all? How many centuries of horror and hell on earth for half the human population?” His gloved hand slapped the wet shoulder of his victim. “That’s what matters.”

  The man rose and opened a tool box. Scalpels, forceps, and specimen pans lined the interior. He moved the cart toward the pelvis of his victim and placed the tools in a tight line.

  “And yet you may be near useless, if your disease progression is an indication.” He shook his head. “An outlier. A data point to skew the norm and discard. And so I lose precious time.”

  He raised an electric scalpel and positioned it over the man’s crotch. A tingle of voltage buzzed in the air.