by Bradley West
Channel surfers saw newly confirmed, pre-symptomatic Covid-20 patients looting supermarkets and pharmacies. Aware that they had only three or so days to live, the ambulatory positives stormed the few well-stocked stores that remained. Many loaded their cars, then were crippled by waves of fever, headache and respiratory distress that left them too weak to drive. A few were gunned down by security personnel until the guards either fled or were shot in turn. None of the looters wore facemasks: They had weaponized their own bodies in a defiant “fuck you” to a society that had failed them.
The Maggio women sat transfixed in the living room as they hopped between local and national news feeds. Covid-20 was on the loose in every major city worldwide. Governors had called out the National Guard and imposed twenty-four-hour curfews, and many states had authorized the use of lethal force on thieves. One CNN anchor likened it to pre-Revolution France when a stolen bread loaf was a capital crime. A conservative counterpart railed that these thugs needed to be shot on sight. A man-in-the-street interviewee wondered what his family and he would eat if they had no food at home and were under “temporary” twenty-four-hour curfew. The suggestion “borrow from neighbors” rang hollow: Neighborly love was hard to come by in a plague.
The front doorbell rang and two Novato Community Hospital EMTs wheeled Greg inside and moved him onto the guestroom bed. The attendants received everyone’s heartfelt thanks, but Barb still double-locked the front door as soon as they left.
* * * * *
Myron Fillmore was the only one who had defied orders and remained in the FBI’s San Francisco office. He was off to a rocky start in his second incarnation as head of a major office, and couldn’t afford to miss days. The advantage of the field office was fast access to government databases. Two days prior, a search of Fraser Burns’ movements had traced a cash payment to U-Store-It in Mill Valley. Burns apparently had the common sense of an over-caffeinated teenager, with the foresight to pay in cash for his one-month rental, but not to use an alias more elaborate than “Frank Burk.” That happened to be the same one he’d used to rent the Stinson Beach house. The connection was good enough for a Federal warrant, but yesterday’s search of the storage locker had come up empty re Tyson Ferguson, just an elaborate array of scientific equipment and folding tables with more empty boxes than gadgets.
While Burns drove back up to Gualala, the remainder of the FBI’s kidnap recovery squad had processed the storage locker. It was this report that held Fillmore’s attention, though he had one eye on CNN as well. AFIS had come back with two fingerprint hits, one of them Fraser Burns and the other a Ms. Katerina Kiel, a Stanford PhD in biology and postgraduate student at Cal Berkeley. Ms. Kiel had experienced a handful of prior encounters with the law, including misdemeanor possession of pot and an animal cruelty charge as a teenager. Her high school interest in biology had extended to vivisecting cats and puppies, possibly without anesthetic. Kiel’s address in Rockridge in East Oakland was still current even though she’d left the University of California payroll as of the end of April. Fillmore’s team had notified local police, but they were preoccupied with Berkeley University’s campus under siege.
The third person of interest was Rolf Muller. Before Black Ice, Muller worked from 2009–2014 as a CIA Global Response Staff contractor in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. The CIA scorpions invariably hailed from the Special Ops community and guarded in-country Agency personnel, drone bases and NSA listening posts. When Fillmore dug deeper, he drew a blank. Rolf Muller had a 1980 birth date, possessed a Social Security number and graduated from Colgate University in 2002. From late 2002–2009, he was invisible, and until 2014 when he returned from Libya with a carved-up cheek, he didn’t have even a credit card in his name. Muller’s hidden past suggested more unattributable overseas mayhem in the employ of the intelligence community. Fillmore hated these types: Well-trained psychopaths were a challenge on multiple levels.
What could or should Fillmore do with this information? With the nation on the verge of a full collapse, there wasn’t manpower to spare even without a lockdown. He considered a snoop around Muller’s Pacific Heights duplex and Kiel’s off-Telegraph Avenue apartment, but he was tired after a sleepless night. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Well, Travis Ryder seemed to have his head screwed on straight. Maybe a heads-up to the former SEAL would split the difference. Fillmore scrolled on his phone to find Ryder’s number. Before he could dial, it rang.
“FBI, Fillmore.”
“It’s Steve Fabian, sheriff of Mendocino County. My team’s done with their first pass at the crash scene and found one deceased female, a late-thirties Caucasian. Our hypothesis is that she’s Lindy Burns based on the driver’s license and other ID found in the vehicle, along with her name on the registration for the Mercedes. The crash pulped her face, so my men couldn’t do a visual match. No baby, but a car seat and baby products suggest she had the child at one point. If it was in there, the body was thrown from the car. We didn’t have cadaver dogs on the scene, so nothing to report from that angle. The black Taurus found nearby was empty and it’s registered to Rolf Muller of San Francisco. The deputies found two cell phones, but no SIM cards. Once I receive the photos, I’ll forward them plus an inventory of what we logged on site.”
“That’s very useful. Thanks for the call.”
“That’s all the good news, I’m afraid. I halted the search due to Covid-20 concerns as Lindy Burns’ car had OTC treatments scattered inside. I won’t be able to bring a CSI team to the site until the governor lifts the lockdown. The Bureau is on its own.”
Aren’t we always? Fillmore thanked the sheriff and hung up. He would put the gist of this into another email, but first he needed to speak with Ryder.
* * * * *
For security reasons, Livermore Lab’s computers didn’t feature a single USB port among them, but Carla had spent the past thirty minutes in her car on her laptop reading Dr. Jacobs’ files while she breathed a mixture of air conditioning and carbon monoxide. The chemistry was complicated, but the steps necessary to formulate that charmed 896MX blend were laid out in full. The second file described how Jacobs altered remdesivir prior to supercharging it into a Covid-killing adjuvant. The third was the design of a suggested double-blind Phase 3 trial. In short, a Nobel Prize on three spreadsheets.
Carla could drive off, sell the package for a billion dollars to one of the global pharma giants and retire to Tahiti, or she could call Overmeyer and be in D.C. before Holland found out. Both options made more sense than what she did instead: email the files to Travis’ and her personal accounts, walk back inside and return to work. That maximized the chance that a vaccine would reach the public in time to prevent mass deaths, and that Tyson Maggio could be ransomed with Nancy’s last half-dose.
Her phone buzzed and she saw it was Travis on Signal. The man had more knowledge of her facility than she’d realized: His plan was ingenious as long as her hazmat suit stayed intact. She’d exfiltrate in a dumpster as part of the daily disposal of hazardous medical garbage, or red-bag waste. She wondered if Travis knew that Livermore Labs incinerated their medical slop at 2,000º F (1080˚C). It would be a crispy end if he didn’t locate her before the truck tipped the dumpster’s contents into the flames.
* * * * *
Maybe it was the gunshot wound, but more likely it was the painkillers: Something had turned Greg into a talker, flat on his back in the guest room. “The bullet missed major veins, arteries and the femur,” he said in a strained voice. “The nine-millimeter round, whatever that means, didn’t fragment and went clean through. Anyway, I need to stay in bed for a week before I start physiotherapy. In the bag, there’s a printout describing my routines along with the antibiotics and painkillers.”
Steph took his hand. “We lost Tyson. The FBI was close, but the governor shut down the state and made them stop chasing the kidnappers. He’s up north near Gualala.”
Greg looked around at the well-wishers until his gaze fell o
n Sal. “You were kidnapped. What happened?”
“I escaped while you were at the park. I received an email from the FBI agent in charge who said the kidnappers had had an accident, and two vehicles went off the road and into a deep ravine. They checked them, but there’s no reason to believe Tyson was in either of the wrecked cars.” Sal omitted the sheriff’s grim speculation about the empty baby seat and the preponderance of wild animals.
“What? Why didn’t you tell us?” Barb and Pat’s voices joined Stephanie’s in an angry chorus.
“There’s nothing more to report until they finish the search,” Jaime said. “Sal and I will recover Tyson. For now, we won’t rely on the FBI.”
Greg let it soak in for a moment before he responded. “As long as we have the cure that Burns wants, they’ll have to contact us.”
Stephanie spat the words as she glared at her father. “Not anymore. Dad gave it to Carla. He decided a vaccine was more important than his grandson’s life.”
Sal maintained a calm façade but felt sick at heart. “They don’t know that. I’ll give myself up as a hostage while they test the fake drug, just like we originally planned. Jaime will find them and rescue Tyson before they know they’ve been tricked.”
“Isn’t that the same plan that failed last night?” Greg rasped.
“Yesterday, there were four kidnappers,” Jaime said. “We killed two of them. The odds are better.”
“Travis Ryder’s men killed those two. Where’s he?” Greg’s voice was down to a whisper.
“Don’t worry, he’ll come back,” Sal lied.
* * * * *
Sixty miles away, Travis stepped into Carla’s home with a mixture of anticipation and dread. As keen as he was to find out more about her, it was also weird to search her apartment. There was also the unease that men feel anytime a woman gives them a shopping list: No matter what they bring back, it’ll be wrong.
The apartment was cluttered: Carla was no housekeeper. The living room table featured stacks of magazines, a varied mixture of The Economist, Vanity Fair and Smithsonian with a couple of dead wine bottles and a glass. He hoped that wasn’t one night’s intake, recalling his descent into the bottle five years ago. These days, he had a magic number to ensure he drank responsibly: zero. He didn’t even have Listerine at home. He resisted the urge to toss the bottles. If he and Carla did a runner, the DOE security people would investigate. That reminded him to put on the latex gloves he’d brought.
The master bedroom didn’t have glasses or bottles, but the nightstand featured Ambien, never a good mix with alcohol. There was also a soft-focus photo of a topless Carla at the beach, breasts thrust forward in a model’s suggestive pose. She had a shy smile. He gave those beauties an extra hard look. The top shelf and floor of the closet had the suitcases he’d sought. He placed them on the unmade bed—a king with only one side slept on—and filled them up. From the tags on her parka, Carla was a winter Tahoe habitué. Her various wool, synthetic fleece and down garments filled the huge canvas duffel he’d brought with him. The two suitcases received samples of her chest of drawers and closets. Knowing women, he dumped all the bathroom skincare and cosmetics contents into two carry-on bags. A few pairs of footwear and Carla was covered.
Bags stacked by the door, he realized it was a two-trip job. That made him uneasy; anyone watching the CCTV feed would see a robbery in progress. Her passport! He snapped his fingers in recognition of his near-fatal omission and found her spare bedroom. She had repurposed it into a home office and it was a godawful mess with how-to books and printouts all over the bed and piled on the desk. The books pertained to poker strategies, and the printouts detailed opponent profiles and wagering patterns. The out-tray contained online account statements plus passwords and login IDs. He did a quick riff through the monthlies: Christ almighty, she had swings of ten grand between May and June in Poker Stars alone. Fifteen minutes, two bank statements and three credit card reminders later and it looked like Carla had lost almost sixty thousand in 2020 year-to-date, and her cards were maxed out at 24% interest rates. Ouch. The center desk drawer contained her passport, checkbooks and a couple more credit/debit cards. He scooped it all up and left.
Two trips later, he’d loaded the Ram and was on his way. It seemed that Carla Maggio, scientist by day, had a wild side to her personality and personal financial issues. He wasn’t certain what to make of it all. He saw that he had a missed call from Fillmore, and he punched the number as he pulled out of the condo parking lot.
* * * * *
Katerina knew that she had intimacy barriers, a term she’d picked up from one of the Stanford shrinks. That sounded like a euphemism for terrified of being touched after teen years spent as a star gymnast molested by the pervert team doctor. Even holding that baby gave her the creeps. From a young age, her parents exalted in her successes and saw the Olympics, Wheaties boxes and million-dollar endorsements in their futures, with a full ride to an expensive college the consolation prize. Mom and Dad wouldn’t tolerate hearing about star coach Ms. Luzinski’s turning a blind eye to Dr. Sanchez’s digital penetrations, so she’d bottled it up and taken it out on other helpless creatures. Thankfully, her records were sealed, and she was able to wrangle a gymnastics half-scholarship from Stanford. She’d competed for a semester, then quit athletics to focus on her twin passions of cutting things up and numbing her mind. She kept the two separated and excelled in her studies.
Despite her aversion to human contact, at college Katerina decided she liked men. Over time, she found that sex could satisfy if she was intoxicated and wielded the upper hand. She fell into another bad habit from the old days, bulimia, even though she no longer had to conform to the sport’s ideal of Marylou Retton-for-life. All this reflection brought her to the current inventory of where she was and what the future held. At the moment she was in a very fucked-up place, hiding in a house with a dying man in a Ziploc bag, a slow-witted former soldier and a scar-faced tough guy who stood over her shoulder as he weighed the odds of getting into her pants. On the other hand, never count out the man with the best drugs.
The serious problems would begin when she was finally back in a lab. Her expertise didn’t extend to vaccine design. She was a replicator: Take a drug and manufacture it in volume. If Burns had given her what he’d promised, she could analyze it and make more. But for now, she had only the infant’s blood to work with. If she was an R&D genius with a multimillion-dollar budget, a dozen assistants and a few years, she might beat out the two hundred other pharma companies at work on a cure. But she wasn’t and that option was off the table.
For her to ring the cash register, one of two things had to happen. Either the baby’s raw blood could be separated and the constituent parts transformed into a treatment, or else she had to extract the formula for Maggio’s drug. With Fraser out of the picture, she supposed she should tell Muller so he could recalibrate expectations. Then again, why do that and perhaps end up dumped out here with no chance of a big payday? Better to delay at least until she was back in the city.
Muller had thought through this evening’s activities, from sending Melvin to scout out vehicles to steal after dark, to determining the best route to Oakland, to discovering where they might find infant formula en route. He needed to take the edge off, and sex relieved tension better than drugs or alcohol. He studied Katerina as she sat in that easy chair with her crosswords. She was a piece of work to be sure, hot so long as you liked them doll-sized, but her vibe was hands-off. He fondled the glass jar in his pocket and felt his penis twitch. He turned and walked into Dr. Heath’s home office, shut the door behind him, opened up Google Chrome, and started typing with one hand.
chapter seventeen
DEAD RECKONING
Saturday, July 11: Kentfield, Livermore, outside Gualala California, late afternoon
“Speak of the devil, I was just about to call. You and Carla make it back okay?” An ostracized Sal had sought refuge in the shade, but the afternoon heat radiate
d off the deck. All he needed was a marinade to qualify as a roast.
Pat stuck her head outside. “It’s on the news that the Marin curfew lifts from five until eight today, and they’re handing out emergency food packages at Marin Catholic. Do you want me to drive down?”
“Hold on a second, Travis.” Sal spoke to his wife. “I’ll swing by after we visit Barb’s place and bring Jaime in case there’s trouble.” Pat disappeared inside and Sal returned to his call. “Sorry, figuring out how to get food for the trip north.”
“The National Guard arrived at Livermore Labs an hour ago. My friend decrypted the Excel files and Carla has the recipe for the adjudicate or vaccine or whatever. I just swapped texts with her and she said a comms blackout is imminent. She’s in the lab, but we’ve planned her escape for Monday night. She’ll bring your half-dose so you can trade it for Tyson.”
“What’s the soonest I can pick it up?”
“I doubt she can smuggle it out ahead of time. Why, have you heard from the kidnappers?”
“No, but you can imagine how my family feels about me giving it away.”
“Tell them they’ll have it back by Tuesday at the latest.”
“Tuesday? That’s three days away.”
“Better to plan for the worst case in case there’s a curfew we can’t easily evade Monday night in which case I’ll call in my last favor with the FBI for Tuesday morning. Fillmore called a while ago. He said the Bureau’s shut down because of Covid-20. He’s in the office self-isolating. He passed along information on Burns and his accomplices. I have home addresses for three of them. You know where Burns lives already. It doesn’t make sense to stake them out: They won’t be there, and even if you surprise them, you’ll be outgunned.”