by Cindy Dees
Mike sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. Piper, who’d lain down while he was on the call, curled around him, mink-like. She was warm and sleek, and he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out if she was being honest with him. If he could forgive her and trust her again. They were sitting at ground zero. If they weren’t dead yet, they would be, soon.
The FBI agent spoke heavily. “We need you to find out when, where, and how the virus was released and give the CDC any support it needs to manage the outbreak.”
“Do you guys have any idea how bad this is going to get?” Mike demanded. “There are thousands of tourists in this town, and they’re all potentially exposed.”
“Make that hundreds of thousands, Agent McCloud. We estimate that 220,000 people have passed through the city in the past three days. Effective now, the city is quarantined. You’re the only special operators we have on the ground, there. You’ll spearhead our efforts inside the quarantine zone.”
“And die?”
“We’ll do everything in our power to come up with an antidote, and the two of you will be at the top of the list to receive it.”
“Whatever,” Mike retorted. He knew full well the odds of scientists coming up with a cure for this killer virus in the next few days. “What do the powers-that-be want us to do?”
“Help with crowd control.”
“We may have a bigger problem, sir,” Mike announced. “My partner and I believe the virus is only the first part of a two-pronged attack on the city. With your permission, I’d like to pursue investigating the other angle we’ve uncovered.”
“That’s a negative, Agent McCloud. You’re more useful there, dealing with the known crisis. Widespread panic is likely. We need you to help keep people calm and show that the government is in control of the situation—”
Mike hung up on the FBI agent before he could say something he truly regretted. The government was fucking not in control of anything. Hell, if he and Piper were going to die anyways, it wasn’t like they needed to worry about disobeying orders. The PHP had yet to drop the other shoe in this drama, and he’d be damned if he’d sit around twiddling his thumbs while those bastards knocked out all the power to a city already in crisis.
A vision of a dead girl with blood red eyes stared back at him out of the darkest corner of the hotel room.
“C’mon, Piper. We’ve got to go.”
“But I’m tired.”
“Right now, baby. Las Vegas is about to get quarantined, and we’ve got to slip out before all the roads are closed.”
Seventeen
Piper watched tensely for pursuit as Mike guided their rental car onto Highway 15, headed north and east out of North Las Vegas. Funny how the booze retreated from her mind when faced with the prospect of being trapped in a city full of contagion. She wasn’t entirely sober, but she working damned hard at ignoring the alcohol in her blood.
“This is a major highway,” she protested. “It’ll be one of the first roads closed. And Nellis Air Force Base is up this way. They’ve got plenty of cops who can be recruited to close the roads.”
Mike shrugged. “Overton is this direction. That’s where the PHP helicopter was last seen. Thought we’d head up there and see what we can learn about it. We’ve got no other leads to follow right now.”
It was a reasonable plan. She just didn’t think they were going to make it clear of the city before the quarantine was put in place. She used her spotter’s scope, which was basically a small telescope, to scan the highway ahead. Sure enough, a cluster of brake lights and the faint blue and red flash of police cars came into view. Crud. She and Mike were too late to slip out of the net.
Frantically, she scanned the sides of the road with her scope. “Take this exit,” she blurted.
Mike swerved the vehicle off the highway at the last minute as the exit ramp loomed beside them. “You got an idea?” he asked grimly.
She glanced over at him. “Any chance you know how to hot wire a dune buggy?”
He frowned. “I can hot wire a car. I expect the ignition on a dune buggy is the same. Why?”
She pointed at an ATV and dune buggy rental business ahead on the right. “There aren’t all that many roads out of Las Vegas. If we want to get up to Overton, I’m thinking we’ll need to go cross-country to make it.”
Mike grinned. “I like the way you think.” He turned off the headlights and parked in front of the closed dune buggy business. “We’ll need all the fuel we can carry. And we’ll need to bust open that lock on the gate.”
“I’ll get the lock,” she offered.
“You’re not going to shoot it out and make an unholy ruckus like you did in Khartoum, are you?” he asked quickly.
She scowled at him. “I got that door open before we died, thank you very much. And I’ll pick this lock if it makes you feel better.”
He hopped over the low, steel gate and headed for one of the largest dune buggy models, a four-seater with a sturdy undercarriage and big wheels. It took her a while to pick the double-action padlock holding the lot’s exit gate closed. By the time the chain fell away from the steel posts, Mike had started the dune buggy and loaded up the back seat with several big jugs of extra gas he’d collected from other dune buggies. She threw the gate open, waited until he drove through, locked it shut again, and climbed in the passenger seat.
“Okay, let’s blow this popsicle stand and bypass us one roadblock and quarantine,” he declared.
She replied, “Are we going to get in trouble for leaving Vegas like this?”
“Do you care? We’re probably exposed to the virus, right? Which means we’re dying if I don’t misunderstand you,” he answered grimly.
There was that.
She braced herself on the overhead sissy bar as they bumped across the rocky desert. It was surprisingly slow going, even though they were in a motorized vehicle capable of handling the terrain. Dawn had lightened the sky overhead and tinged the eastern horizon with peaches and pink hues before Mike turned the dune buggy back toward the north and west.
“Where are you going?” Piper asked in quick alarm.
“The PHP helicopter was last in Overton, which is about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas. We can bump across the desert all damn day, or I can hit the highway north of the quarantine road blocks, and we can be there in an hour.”
It took them more like two hours by the time they rejoined Highway 15 and melded into the heavy northbound flow of traffic. They weren’t the only people from the area around Las Vegas eager to put some distance between themselves and the quarantine zone, apparently.
The buggy’s radio was saying nothing whatsoever about any kind of quarantine. News blackout, most likely. But it was hard to cut off the Internet and phone networks entirely. As the country woke up, word would get out soon enough.
Speaking of which, Piper pulled out her cell phone to check its reception. No signal. “Mike, is your phone working?”
He fished it out and took a look. “Nope. I’ve got no coverage out here. We must have mountains between us and the nearest tower.”
“Or else the government has shut down all communications in and out of Las Vegas,” she retorted.
“Trying to control panic?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It’s a pretty normal part of crisis response scenarios at the CDC. It delays the attempted rush for the police lines. Gives the authorities time to get other assets in place to back up the police and keep the populace in the quarantine zone.”
“There’s the turnoff for the airport up ahead,” he commented.
“Do you want to go in now, guns blazing and confront the PHP guys, or are we going to play it low key and wait till tonight to check out the helicopter?”
Make glanced over at her. “What are the odds your dad and his cronies have made friends with the managers at the airport? If we go in and ask some questions, will the staff at the airport tip off your old man?”
“Absolutely. My father is charming when he puts
his mind to it. The way I hear it, aviators stick together. It’s a tight little club. Kind of like the good ole’ boy network in military intelligence.”
“What good ole’ boy network?” he asked in surprise.
She waved off the question. She did not need to get into a debate about women in the intel world and workplace inequality. Las Vegas was dying behind them. And besides, the ole’ boys had already kicked her out of their club. “Why do you ask about my father?”
“If he’s likely to have made friends, then we’ll need to wait.” Mike drove around for a little while and eventually spotted a crappy motel that looked like it had seen better decades long before the sun baked it to a parched near ruin.
“Betchya they rent these rooms by the hour,” she muttered as they hopped out of the dune buggy.
“Not taking that bet,” Mike retorted. “Let me do the talking. You talk too classy for a place like this.”
Frowning, she listened in as he put on the absolutely worst bubba imitation she’d ever been unfortunate enough to witness. But, the clerk forked over a room key dangling from a big plastic teardrop after Mike forked over a wad of cash. She couldn’t resist messing with him just a little, though.
“Hey, save some of that cash for me,” she exclaimed.
The clerk’s bored expression didn’t waver for an instant, but Mike’s ears reddened. Grinning at his back, she followed him outside. It was barely nine a.m. but the day was already heating up fast to oven-like conditions.
The tired-looking motel room was clean after a fashion. She reminded herself that it was better than crawling around in the African bush and forced herself to stretch out on the bed. Her head ached a little and she experienced a brief bout of dizziness as she lay down. Good thing she hadn’t drunk any more of that vodka last night before the FBI call came in.
“Need some hair of the dog?” Mike asked.
“Nope. Just water.”
He carried her a glass full of vaguely brown water from the tap. It smelled like rust and tasted like nails. But, it was wet and soothed her headache.
Mike stretched out beside her on the narrow double bed, their shoulders and elbows rubbing. He asked absently, “What does the onset of Ebola look like?”
“Flu-like symptoms. Fever. Body aches. Maybe some vomiting and diarrhea. The heavy bleeding doesn’t happen until the end and doesn’t happen in every case. But then, we’re not dealing with Plain-Jane Ebola. No telling what other effects Yusef’s strain will have.”
“The girls in the body bags had red eyeballs.”
“That’s from capillary hemorrhaging. All the small capillaries in their bodies ruptured. They probably had full body bruising, too. Bloody stool, bloating, and skin lesions wouldn’t be surprising once the real hemorrhaging kicks in.”
“So we’re going to die horrible, painful deaths?” he murmured.
“I try not to think about it,” she murmured back. “And we don’t know for sure that we were exposed. Maybe we dodged the bullet.”
“Is anybody sick in Las Vegas, yet?” he asked.
“No idea. I bet that CDC guy is thinking about us right about now. Bet he’s not calling us crazy anymore.”
Mike snorted. “He’s still in denial. He’ll have to be knee-deep in dead bodies before he believes there’s a crisis.”
“He may get to experience that,” she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.
Mike stared at the ceiling as Piper napped beside him. This was seriously not how he’d planned to leave this world. He felt so damned helpless just sitting around waiting for an invisible little virus to lay him low. Restless, he got out of bed and rooted around in the go bags he and Piper had been hauling around with them since D.C.
The survival equipment inside was adequate for a trained soldier to live off the land for many weeks, if necessary. He and Piper should just take the gear and go. Run for the hills and get away from any other human beings. Just the two of them. No exposure to killer fevers, no outsiders judging them. No jobs. No missions.
That would be nice.
Except she wouldn’t do it any more than he would, at the end of the day. They were both soldiers in their hearts of hearts. They lived to serve a higher purpose.
She’d been calmer about losing her job than he’d expected. And she was still out here risking her neck in spite of having been canned. That said a lot about her core character. She was more like him than she cared to admit. Or maybe than he’d cared to admit up till now. Lord knew, she’d flown to his defense last night when that blonde was crawling all over him. It had been pretty cute, actually.
Unable to sleep at all, he left the motel and found a convenience store. He loaded up on water and non-perishable food, surprised that word wasn’t out yet in this area and that there hadn’t already been a run on this little store. Grateful for small blessings, he took his purchases and headed back to the motel.
Piper was pacing the room restlessly when he unlocked the door. “Thank God!” she cried out. “They’ve cut off all the phones and the television is out.”
“Is the TV itself not working, or is the cable service down?” Mike asked with interest.
“Whole cable company is shut down according to the desk clerk. And the phone land lines are out, too.”
“Uncle Sam’s not going to be able to sit on this for too much longer,” Mike commented.
“Which makes me think the PHP will have to make its move soon. As infrastructure is taken off line, doing whatever they’re going to do will get harder,” she replied.
“Stop pacing. You’ll wear a hole in the linoleum,” he muttered. She spun to face him, wringing her hands. Noting the unconscious gesture, he asked, “What’s wrong, Piper?”
“What if this was my family’s plan all along?” she wailed. “To get all these modern services turned off while Las Vegas is quarantined?”
He answered slowly, “I think you father will reach for something larger than merely getting the TV and phones shut down for a while.” He grabbed her hands and forcibly stilled them. “Breathe, baby. Calm down. I need you thinking on all cylinders. In your estimation, would a telephone and television service interruption be enough for your father to feel like he’d made his point?”
She exhaled hard a few times. Then looked up at him in distress. One more hard breath out, and then, “No. It’s not enough. He’ll do more.”
Mike spoke soothingly. “It’s heading toward noon now. Why don’t we go over toward the airport and get the lay of the land before it gets too hot?”
“Action. That would be good. I need to do something. We need to do something.”
She had as bad a case of pre-mission jitters as he’d ever seen. “Easy, darlin’,” he murmured. “All in good time. The world’s not going to end in the next few minutes.” Although, truth be told, it might. He had no idea what was going on in the city behind them, and he didn’t want to think about it. More than most people, he knew how fast the veneer of civilization fell away when people thought they and their loved ones were going to die.
He and Piper climbed into the dune buggy and headed out. He used a combination of side roads and cross-country jaunts to navigate to the municipal airport. On foot, they climbed a likely ridge overlooking one side of the facility. They lay side-by-side in the grit and gravel, scoping out the airfield as the sun climbed overhead, beating down on them mercilessly. The worst of the day’s heat rolled in fast. It had to be pushing 120 degrees out here.
“What is it with you and hot places?” she griped under her breath.
“Hot chicks. Hot weather. I guess I just like it hot.”
She rolled her eyes and plastered her ruddy, perspiring face to her sniper’s scope.
“See any white choppers with red stripes?” he muttered to her, staring through his own scope.
“They could have repainted it,” she replied.
“Nah. Aviation paint is tricky stuff. Expensive. You have to strip off the old layer first for weight purposes. Plus, i
t can’t peel at high speed and has to be anti-corrosive.”
“Over there,” she announced.
He glanced away from his scope to look at her finger. He followed its trajectory outward to an asphalt parking area wavering behind massive heat distortion in the air. Sure enough, he spotted a white and red chopper. Using his scope, he took a closer look at it. “What’s that thing on the side of it?”
“I don’t know. It looks like metal steps up into the passenger compartment.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Disabled access to a helicopter?” she mumbled. “That is strange.”
“It’s not getting any cooler out here. What say we hike on over there and take a closer look? The whole airport looks deserted at the moment.”
“I don’t relish sitting here baking all afternoon,” she said by way of reply.
They cut through the hurricane fence with a pair of big wire cutters Mike extracted from one of the go bags. He rolled under the fence first and held it up for Piper to follow him. They hiked casually across a big field toward the airplanes as if they belonged there. Sometimes, it was best to hide in plain sight. With no cover whatsoever on the field, there was no way they would be able to approach the helicopter stealthily. Today, they just had to brazen it out.
They arrived at the row of small airplanes tied down to steel anchors sunk in the concrete. Dodging under wings and stepping over tie-down ropes, they approached the PHP helicopter.
The first thing Mike noticed was that it seemed fairly hefty for a civilian bird. And of course, those strange metal steps were welded onto the left skid of the helo.
Up close, it turned out that two more steps would fold down from the step assembly in flight, extending several feet below the skid. On the ground, of course, the steps couldn’t extend because they would run into the dirt.
“What do you make of this?” he asked Piper, partially unfolding the aluminum extension steps and then replacing them. They’d clearly been welded onto the bird recently.