by Jack Mars
Gunner grabbed a net and got ready. The bluefish—silver and blue and green and white and very, very angry, was hoisted from the water and into the cockpit.
“Nice fish.”
“A slump breaker!”
The bluefish flopped on deck, caught in the green mesh of the hand net.
“Will we keep him?”
“No. He gets us off the snide, but we’re here for stripers. Blues are exciting, but striped bass are bigger and they’re better on the grill, too.”
They released the fish—Gunner watched as his dad seized the still-jerking, snapping bluefish, and removed the hook, his fingers just inches from those hungry teeth. His dad dropped the fish over the side, where with a quick tail whip, it headed for the deep.
No sooner had the fish disappeared than his dad’s phone started to ring. His dad smiled and looked at the phone. Then he put it aside. It buzzed and buzzed. After a while, it stopped. Ten seconds passed before it started ringing again.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Gunner said.
His dad shook his head. “No. In fact, I’m going to turn my phone off.”
Gunner felt a surge of fear in his stomach. “Dad, you have to answer it. What if it’s an emergency? What if the bad guys are taking over again?”
His dad stared at Gunner for a long second. The phone stopped buzzing. Then it started again. He answered it.
“Stone,” he said.
He paused and his face darkened. “Hi, Richard. Yes, Susan’s chief-of-staff. Sure. I’ve heard of you. Well, listen. You know I’m taking some time off, right? I haven’t even decided if I’m still on the Special Response Team, or whatever it’s called now. Yes, I understand, but there’s always something urgent. No one ever calls me at home and tells me it isn’t urgent. Okay… okay. If the President is serious that she wants a meeting, then she can call me personally. She knows where to reach me. Okay? Thanks.”
When his dad hung up, Gunner watched him. He didn’t look like he was having as much fun as just a minute ago. Gunner knew that if the President called, his dad would quickly pack his bags and go somewhere. Another mission, maybe more bad guys to kill. And he would leave Gunner and his mom home alone again.
“Dad, is the President going to call you?”
His dad ruffled Gunner’s hair. “Monster, I sure hope not. Now what do you say? Let’s go get some stripers.”
*
Hours later, the President still hadn’t called.
Luke and Gunner had caught three nice stripers, and Luke showed Gunner how to gut, clean, and filet them. It was old ground, but repetition was how you learned. Becca even got into the act, bringing a bottle of wine out to the patio and setting a cheese and cracker plate on the outdoor table.
Luke was just firing up the grill when the phone rang.
He looked at his family. They had frozen on the first ring. He and Becca made eye contact. He couldn’t read what was in her eyes anymore. Whatever it was, it was not supportive approval. He answered the phone.
A deep voice, a man: “Agent Stone?”
“Yes.”
“Please hold for the President of the United States.”
He stood numb, listening to blank air.
The phone clicked and she came on. “Luke?”
“Susan.”
His mind flashed back to an image of her, leading the entire country, and much of the world, in singing “God Bless America.” It was an amazing moment, but that’s all it was, a moment. And it was the kind of thing politicians were good at. It was practically a parlor trick.
“Luke, we’ve got a crisis on our hands.”
“Susan, we always have a crisis on our hands.”
“Right now, I am up to my ass in alligators.”
Nice. He hadn’t heard that one in a while.
“We’re going to have a meeting. Here at the house. I need you there.”
“When is the meeting?”
She didn’t hesitate. “In an hour.”
“Susan, with traffic, I’m two hours away. That’s on a good day. Right now, half the roads are still closed.”
“You won’t be sitting in traffic. There’s a helicopter on the way to you now. It’ll be there in fourteen minutes.”
Luke looked at his family again. Becca had poured herself a glass of wine and sat faced away from him, staring toward the late afternoon sun sinking toward the water. Gunner stared down at the fish on the grill.
“Okay,” Luke said into the phone.
CHAPTER SIX
6:45 p.m.
United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
“Agent Stone, I’m Richard Monk, the President’s chief-of-staff. We talked on the phone today.”
Luke had come off the Naval Observatory helipad five minutes before. He shook hands with a tall, fit-looking guy, maybe late-thirties, probably right around Luke’s age. The man wore a blue dress shirt with sleeves rolled up his forearms. His tie hung askew. His upper body was scientifically muscular, like in an ad for Men’s Health. He worked hard and he played hard—that’s what Richard Monk’s look told anyone who would listen.
They walked the marble hallway of the New White House toward wide double doors down at the end. “We’ve adapted our old conference room into a situation room,” Monk said. “It’s a work in progress, but we’re going to get there.”
“You’re lucky to be alive, aren’t you?” Luke said.
The mask of confidence on the man’s face faltered, only for a second. He nodded. “The Vice… Well, she was the Vice President at the time. The President and I and a bunch of staff were on a West Coast swing when President Hayes summoned her back East. It was very sudden. I stayed behind in Seattle with a few people to tie up some loose ends. When Mount Weather happened…”
He shook his head. “It’s too horrible. But yes, that could have been me, too.”
Luke nodded. Workers were still pulling bodies out of Mount Weather days after the disaster. Three hundred so far, and counting. Among them were the former Secretary of State, the former Secretary of Education, the former Secretary of the Interior, the head of NASA, and dozens of United States Representatives and Senators.
The firefighters had only put out the central underground fire yesterday.
“What is the crisis that Susan called me out here for?” Luke said.
Monk gestured toward the end of the hall. “Uh, President Hopkins is there in the conference room, along with some key staff. I think I’m going to let them tell you what’s going on.”
They passed through the double doors and into the room. More than a dozen people were already seated at a large oval table. Susan Hopkins, President of the United States, sat at the far side of the room from the door. She was small, almost unassuming, surrounded by large men. Two Secret Service agents stood on either side of her. Three more stood in various corners of the room.
A nervous-looking man stood at the head of the table. He was tall, balding, a little paunchy, wearing glasses and an ill-fitting suit. Luke sized him up in about two seconds. This was not his normal venue, and he believed himself to be in deep trouble. He looked like a man who was currently being grilled from all sides.
Susan stood. “Everyone, before we begin, I want to introduce you to Agent Luke Stone, formerly of the FBI Special Response Team. He saved my life a few days ago, and he was instrumental in saving the Republic as we know it. That is not an exaggeration. I’m not sure I’ve ever before met an operative as skilled, as knowledgeable, and as fearless in the face of adversity. It’s a credit to our nation, our Armed Forces, and our intelligence community that we identify and train men and women like Agent Stone.”
Now everyone stood and applauded. To Luke’s ears, the applause sounded stilted and formal. These people had to applaud. The President wanted them to. He raised a hand, trying to make it stop. The situation was absurd.
“Hi,” he said when the clapping ended. “Sorry I’m late.”
Luke sat in an empty chair. T
he man standing in the front stared directly at him. Now Luke couldn’t tell what was in the man’s eyes. Hope? Maybe. He looked like a desperate quarterback about to launch a Hail Mary pass in Luke’s direction.
“Luke,” Susan said. “This is Dr. Wesley Drinan, Director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He is briefing us on a possible security breach at the Biosafety Level 4 lab there.”
“Ah,” Luke said. “All right.”
“Agent Stone, are you familiar with Biosafety Level 4 laboratories?”
“Uh, Luke is fine. I’m familiar with the term. Maybe you can bring me all the way up to speed, however.”
Drinan nodded. “Of course. I’ll give you the thirty-second elevator pitch. BSL-4 labs are the highest level of security when dealing with biological agents. BSL-4 is the level required for work with dangerous and exotic viruses and bacteria that pose a high risk of laboratory infections, as well as those which cause severe to fatal disease in humans. These are diseases for which vaccines or other treatments aren’t currently available. In general, I’m talking about Ebola, Marburg, and some of the emerging hemorrhagic viruses that we’re just discovering in deep jungle regions of Africa and South America. Sometimes we also handle newly mutated influenza viruses until we understand their transmission mechanisms, infection rates, mortality rates, and so on.”
“Okay,” Luke said. “I get it. And something was stolen?”
“We don’t know. Something is missing. But we don’t know what happened to it.”
Luke didn’t speak. He simply nodded at the man to keep him talking.
“We had a power failure two nights ago. That in itself is rare. Rarer still is that our backup generators didn’t immediately kick on. The design of the facility is that in the event of an outage, there should be a seamless shift from main power to backup power. It didn’t happen. Instead, the facility went to emergency reserves, which is a low-power state that only keeps essential systems running.”
“What sort of non-essential systems went down?” Luke said.
Drinan shrugged. “The things you can imagine. Lights. Computers. Camera systems.”
“Security cameras?”
“Yes.”
“Inside the facility?”
“Yes.”
“Was there anyone inside?”
The man nodded. “There were two people inside at the time. One was a security guard named Thomas Eder. He’s worked at the facility for fifteen years. He was at the guard station and not inside the containment facility. We’ve interviewed him, as have the police and the Texas Bureau of Investigation. He’s being cooperative.”
“Who else?”
“Uh, there was a scientist inside the containment facility. Her name is Aabha Rushdie. She’s from India. She is a beautiful person and a very good scientist. She studied in London, has gone through multiple BSL-4 trainings, and has all the required security clearances. She’s been with us for three years and I’ve worked directly with her on many occasions.”
“Okay…” Luke said.
“When the power went down, she temporarily lost flow in her air hose. This is a potentially dangerous situation. She was also cast into total darkness. She became afraid, and it seems that Thomas Eder may have allowed her to exit the facility without following all the required safety protocols.”
Luke smiled. This seemed like an easy one. “And then something was missing?”
Drinan hesitated. “The following day, an inventory discovered that a vial of a very specific Ebola virus had gone missing.”
“Has anyone spoken with the Rushdie woman?”
Drinan shook his head. “She’s also gone missing. Yesterday, her car was found by a rancher on an isolated property in the hill country fifty miles west of Austin. The state police suggest that cars abandoned like that are often a sign of foul play. She’s not at her apartment. We’ve tried to contact her family in London, with no luck.”
“Would she have any reason to steal the Ebola virus?”
“No. It’s impossible to believe. I’ve wrestled with this for two days. The Aabha I know is not someone who… I can’t even say it. She just isn’t that way. I don’t understand what’s going on. I’m afraid she might have been kidnapped or fallen into the hands of criminals. I’m at a loss for words.”
“We haven’t even reached the worst part,” Susan Hopkins said abruptly. “Dr. Drinan, can you tell Agent Stone about the virus itself, please?”
The good doctor nodded. He looked at Stone.
“The Ebola is weaponized. It’s similar to Ebola found in nature, like the Ebola that killed ten thousand people during the West African outbreak, only worse. It’s more virulent, more fast acting, can be transmitted more easily, and has a higher fatality rate. It is a very dangerous substance. We need to either get it back, destroy it, or determine to our satisfaction that it was already destroyed.”
Luke turned to Susan.
“We want you to go down there,” she said. “See what you can find out.”
Those were the exact words Luke didn’t want to hear. Over the phone, she had invited him to a meeting. But she had brought him here to give him a mission.
“I wonder,” he said, “if we can talk about this in private?”
*
“Can we get you anything?” Richard Monk said. “Coffee?”
“Sure, I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Luke said.
He wouldn’t mind drinking some coffee right now, but mostly he accepted the offer because he thought that would make Monk leave the room. Wrong. Monk simply picked up a phone and ordered some from the kitchen downstairs.
Luke, Monk, and Susan were in an upstairs sitting room near the family living quarters. Luke knew that Susan’s family didn’t live here. When she was Vice President, he hadn’t paid much attention to her, but he had somehow gotten the idea that she and her husband were estranged.
Luke sat back in a comfortable easy chair. “Susan, before we start, I want to tell you something. I’ve decided to retire, effective immediately. I’m telling you before I tell anyone else, so you can find someone else to head the SRT.”
Susan didn’t speak.
“Stone,” Monk said, “you might as well know now. The Special Response Team is on the chopping block. It’s finished. Don Morris was involved in the coup, right from the beginning. He is at least partially responsible for one of the worst atrocities to ever take place on American soil. And he created the Special Response Team. I’m sure you can understand that security, and especially the President’s security, is the most important thing on our radar right now. It’s not just SRT. We are investigating suspect sub-agencies within CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon, among others. We need to root out the conspirators, so nothing like this can ever happen again.”
“I understand your concerns,” Luke said.
And he did. The government was fragile right now, maybe as fragile as it had ever been. The Congress was mostly wiped out and a retired supermodel had been elevated to the Presidency. The United States had been shown to have feet of clay, and if there were any coup plotters still around, there was no reason why they shouldn’t make another grab for power.
“If you’re going to eliminate the SRT anyway, then this is a perfect time for me to leave.” The more he said things like this, the more real it became to him.
It was time to put his family back together. It was time to recreate that idyllic place in his mind where he, Becca, and Gunner could be alone, away from these concerns, where even if the worst happened, it wouldn’t matter all that much.
Heck, maybe he should just go home and ask Becca if she wanted to move to Costa Rica. Gunner could grow up bilingual. They could live on the beach somewhere. Becca could have an exotic garden. Luke could go surfing a couple of times a week. The west coast of Costa Rica had some of the best swells in the Americas.
Susan spoke for the first time. “It’s a horrible time for you to leave. The timing couldn’t be worse. Your co
untry needs you.”
He looked at her. “You know what, Susan? That’s not really true. You think that because I’m the guy you happened to see in action. There are a million guys like me. There are guys more capable than me, more experienced, more level-headed. You don’t seem to know this, but some people think I’m a loose cannon.”
“Luke, you can’t leave me here,” she said. “We are teetering on the verge of disaster. I’ve been stuck into a role I was not… I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know who is good and who is bad. I’m half-expecting to turn a corner and catch a bullet in the head. I need my people around me. People I can put all my faith in.”
“I’m one of your people?”
She looked him directly in the eyes. “You saved my life.”
Richard Monk broke into the conversation. “Stone, what you don’t know is the Ebola is replicable. That wasn’t covered in the meeting. Wesley Drinan told us in confidence that it’s possible people with the right equipment and knowledge could make more of it. The last thing we need is an unknown group of people running around with weaponized Ebola virus, trying to stockpile it.”
Luke looked at Susan again.
“Take this job,” Susan said. “Figure out what happened to the missing woman. Find the missing Ebola. When you come back, if you really want to retire, I will never ask you to do another thing. We started something together a few nights ago. Do this one last thing for me, and I’m ready to say the job is finished.”
Her eyes never left his. She was a typical politician in many ways. When she reached for you, she found you. It was hard to say no to her.
He sighed. “I can leave in the morning.”
Susan shook her head. “We’ve already got a plane waiting for you.”
Luke’s eyes widened, surprised. He took a long breath.
“OK,” he finally said. “But first I need to get some people from the Special Response Team together. I’m thinking of Ed Newsam, Mark Swann, and Trudy Wellington. Newsam’s on injury leave right now, but I’m pretty sure he’ll come back if I ask him.”