“I have an idea.” Richard swiveled his head, checking for pursuing headlights. Nothing. “Have you ever heard of Malacosoma americanum?”
Dwight thought about it. “No. But as long as we’re playing Fictionary, do you know what a filovirus is?”
“No.”
“Then I think we’re about to have one hell of an enlightening discussion.”
Richard stared out the window at the neon landscape flashing by. Enlightening? No, it would be much more than that. Terrifying was one word that came to mind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ATLANTA
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24
In the dead zone of night—well past midnight, well before dawn—Richard and Dwight sat in a booth at a Waffle House on the northeast side of Atlanta. The usual denizens of the wee hours drifted in and out: cops, drunks, die-hard partiers, workers whose shifts began long before sunrise.
At first glance, the small establishment seemed more a gathering place than a breakfast eatery, but the flood tide of odors—fresh eggs, buttermilk pancakes, pork sausage—greasy but agreeable—that fled from the sizzling grill suggested otherwise. Dwight, his meaty hand twisting a coffee cup in a slow-motion circle, seemed to remain circumspect of Richard, but at least indicated a willingness to partake in discussion.
Richard hadn’t eaten since the previous morning and dove with unabated enthusiasm into the scrambled eggs and pancakes delivered by a bubbly waitress with Nicki Minaj eyes.
“Y’all enjoy that now, sir.” She watched him attack the food. “There’s more where that came from, ya know.” She turned to Dwight and patted his arm. “Sure I can’t bring ya something, honey, grits or toast maybe?”
Dwight declined. The waitress issued a motherly frown of disapproval and departed.
“Tell me about filoviruses,” Richard said.
Dwight did. Everything. He focused on Ebola. No vaccine. No cure. No hope. An excruciating way to die.
“Ebola attacks your body’s blood-clotting capabilities with particular ferocity,” he said. “It goes after your major organs, devastating your kidneys, liver and spleen. You’re racked with crippling fatigue, agonizing pain, boiling fever. Your eyeballs turn blood red. Your throat turns mushy and raw... to the point you can’t even swallow your own saliva. And there’s absolutely nothing that can help you.” He paused. “Not even prayer.” His words seemed to come from someplace far away. He reached for a glass of water and took a long swallow. He set the glass back on the table.
“Liquefied coffee grounds,” he continued. “That’s what your vomit looks like. It’s filled with blood and dead tissue.” He shook his head, as if disturbed by the image. “Things aren’t any better at the other end. You’re defecating the linings of your intestines in explosions of bloody diarrhea.” He voice trailed off to a whisper. “Your shit resembles molten tar.”
Richard, whose eating slowed steadily as Dwight’s monologue progressed, shoved the last few bites away from him.
“Sorry,” Dwight said. “It’s not pleasant. It’s revolting and nightmarish. But you need to know what we’re dealing with. Ebola is a stone-cold killer, and your suffering doesn’t end until the virus worms its way into your heart and brain. In the end, your blood pressure tanks, you go into shock from blood and fluid loss... and mercifully, you die.”
Richard remained silent for a long while before asking, in a quiet voice, “So what did Barashi develop?”
Dwight explained how the terrorist had melded the airborne transmissive qualities of Ebola-Reston with the lethalness of Ebola-Zaire, in effect producing a bioengineered Black Death that floated through the air like microscopic pollen.
The revelation hit Richard with wrecking-ball force. He suddenly understood the full horror of what Barashi was about to unleash. He lifted a glass of water toward his lips, but missed, the liquid dribbling down his chin as his hand shook in a Parkinson’s-like tremor. He attempted to draw a deep breath, but struggled against the sensation that a noose had been cinched around his chest and yanked tight. He gasped.
“What is it, man? You okay?” Dwight rose halfway from the booth.
Richard, struggling to compose himself, motioned for the virologist to stay seated. The two men sat in silence for several minutes, Dwight, watching, concerned; Richard, waiting for the noose to loosen.
Finally it did. “Until just now,” Richard said, his voice barely audible, even to himself, “I had less than a full appreciation of what Barashi could do. I thought maybe we were dealing with something like anthrax or smallpox, bad enough, but Ebola...”
“You know something else, don’t you?” Dwight declared, his gaze locked on Richard. “I can see it. Feel it. It’s palpable. You’re terrified.”
“Malacosoma americanum,” Richard responded, his voice shaky, “tent caterpillars.”
“Tent caterpillars?”
“We don’t have tent caterpillars where I live, but there was a feature on TV about them last night.”
“I know what they are.”
Nasty little black and tan hairy things, Richard had learned; moth larvae that build webs—“tents”—in the crotches of tree limbs and attack its foliage with the ferocity of swarming locusts. They can completely defoliate a tree, strip it bare, within a week.
“They’re kind of out of control this year, I gather,” Richard said.
“Yes.” Dwight said it slowly, as though a dawning awareness of an even greater evil was enveloping him; as if he knew Richard’s next words would loose some sort of ineffable dread; something too awful to imagine.
“The only clue I got from the informant at Diamond Cutters before Barashi turned him into kindling was ‘tent,’” Richard said. “‘He’s going after the tent—’ And this.” Richard slid the slip of paper Khassem had given him to Dwight.
“I understand you control tent caterpillars by spraying them,” he added.
Dwight studied the names on the paper. His face tightened into a ligature of concern. He flapped his sandal against the sole of his foot so rapidly it sounded like a mallard taking flight.
“What?” Richard said.
“These are subdivisions.” Dwight leaned in close to Richard and pointed at the paper. “Big subdivisions in the northern part of the county. Elysian Fields. King’s Landing. Magnolia Heights.”
“Oh, God, no,” Richard said softly. He closed his eyes. Now it made sense, what Barashi had said earlier about Americans coming to know the terror or despair—he couldn’t recall the exact word—of realizing not even their homes were safe. To be afraid to step from their doors, to draw a breath.
Dwight spoke more urgently now, the words tumbling from him in a cascade of disbelief. He saw the same thing Richard did. “So Barashi drives through these neighborhoods in a vehicle that looks like your typical yard care pickup with some kind of pump apparatus mounted on it, and acts like he’s spraying for tent caterpillars. He doesn’t look out of place. People are used to seeing their trees sprayed when they’re infested. So nobody is the wiser for several days until the dying starts. And then it’s too late. The virus is loose. Probably all over the world. An airplane trip. A sneeze. A cough. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” He stared at Richard, an empty, despairing look. What do we do?
A high-decibel silence settled over the table, though the hammering of Richard’s pulse echoed from one side of his head to the other.
Dwight spoke again. “People wouldn’t even have to breathe the stuff. Kids and pets walking across yards where the spray had fallen would track the virus into their homes.”
“Assuming we’re right,” Richard said, “when do you think he would do this? Today? Tomorrow? Next week?”
“Why wait? Thanks to you, his lab has been exposed, and he’s been ID’d. The fuse has been lit, dude. He ain’t waitin’.”
A Mixmaster of thou
ghts swirled through Richard’s head, and he struggled to focus on a single issue. He finally found the one that seemed most important. He threaded his fingers together and leaned toward Dwight. “Time of day,” he said. “Is there a time of day that would work better than any other for Barashi?”
Dwight drummed his fingers on the table briefly, then said, “Yes, it’s best to spray right at sunrise. It’s usually calm then. Barashi doesn’t want the virus flying all over the place, chasing him around. He wants to be able to control it. So to speak. Also, at this time of year, when it rains around here it’s usually in the afternoon, not the morning.” Dwight checked his watch, shook his head. “So basically, we’re out of time. Sunup’s in less than three hours.”
“Dawn patrol, then?” Richard surprised himself by saying it.
“Us?” Dwight’s droopy mustache rose with his eyebrows.
“Look, it’s kind of short notice to convince the cops and FBI that Barashi’s going to attack subdivisions. By the time we made our pitch and they muster their forces, the assault could be over. Then there’s the little matter of me being wanted for murder, possessing an illegal handgun, and God knows what else.”
“Us?” Dwight said again.
“Oh, and did I mention Barashi may have a hostage, a Methodist minister? A female. I’d just as soon not have to explain that, either. Snatched out of Diamond Cutters.”
The virologist tilted his head back, stared at the ceiling and expelled a long, slow breath. “Anything else?” he said.
“Well, yeah, there’s a professional assassin, one of Barashi’s sidekicks I think, who’s been trying to filet me with her pet knife.”
“Her pet knife?” Dwight stared at Richard.
Richard nodded.
Dwight buried his face in his hands. “God help me,” he muttered, “I’m trapped in an Elmore Leonard novel.”
“Well, consider the bright side then. We could be wrong about all this.”
Dwight looked up. “You think?”
Richard didn’t answer.
“Me either,” Dwight said.
“Come on,” Richard responded, “all we have do is run reconnaissance. It’s not like we’re vigilantes. If we spot something suspicious, we call 911. I’ve got a buddy on the county police force. I’m sure he’d be glad to rush to my aid, wherever I am. And I assume after yesterday you’ve got some FBI contacts.”
“This is a really bad idea, you know.”
“Got a better one?”
“Yeah. Let the authorities handle it. The government doesn’t always move at garden slug speed.”
“Fine. And you’ll explain to them you came by the information how? In the course of harboring a fugitive?”
“I don’t need to tell them that. All I need to tell them is that I have a strong, well-founded suspicion of what’s about to go down. And when and where.” He picked up his cell phone.
“Good luck,” Richard said.
Dwight punched in Dr. Zambit’s cell phone number, knowing his boss probably was awake and hanging around the CDC Emergency Operations Center.
“Zamby,” Dwight said when Zambit answered, “I know what this guy Barashi is going to do.”
“Who?”
“Barashi, the terrorist. We thought his name was Gonzales. It’s not, it’s Alnour Barashi, an Arab.”
“Whoa, slow down, Dwight. Where are you? How’d you find this out? I thought you’d be home in bed after that CEO gent didn’t show up at Hotmouth Harry’s. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Trust me, I know what’s going to happen. I can’t tell you how—”
“Yes, you can. I can’t promote one of your wild-ass hunches to the FBI and—”
“Damn it. You have to!” Dwight slammed the table with an open hand. A cop sitting at the counter glanced in his direction. Dwight raised his hand in apology. “Sorry,” he said to the cop. The policeman returned to his coffee and English muffin.
“Look, Zamby,” Dwight continued, snapping his words out, “there isn’t time. I’m talking a matter of hours.” He looked at his wristwatch. “Maybe two.”
“Two?” Zambit said it so loudly Dwight had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“Yeah. Sunrise.”
“Have you been drinking, Dwight?”
“This isn’t a joke, Bossman. I’m dead-ass serious.”
Zambit issued a long sigh, then said, “Okay, talk to me... against my better judgment.”
Dwight spent the next ten minutes giving Zambit the details of how, when and where he expected Barashi’s attack to go down.
When he’d finished, Zambit said, “You know, that tale’s bizarre enough I almost believe it. But I’d still like to know how you—”
“Not gonna happen, Boss. Can you muster the cavalry or not?”
“Why do I always feel like I’m Wile E. Coyote about to take a header over a cliff when I listen to you?”
“Answer the question. Are we gonna hear bugles shortly?”
Dwight noticed the cop at the counter had taken a renewed interest in him and Richard, and wondered if he’d recognized Richard, or at least thought Richard bore a resemblance to someone wanted for murder.
On the phone, Zambit said, “I don’t know. Let me talk to the law enforcement guys here and get back to you.”
“Quickly, boss.”
Dwight hung up. The cop at the counter was speaking into his shoulder mike and simultaneously keeping an eye on him and Richard. Not a good sign.
Dwight stood. “Be right back,” he said, and headed toward the restrooms.
The waitress, who apparently had been overwhelmed by a sudden influx of customers, came flying in Richard’s direction with a pot of coffee in each hand. “High test or unleaded?” she said. She hoisted the pots to make them more visible. Tools of her trade held aloft.
Richard declined.
“You didn’t finish your breakfast,” she admonished. She peered carefully at him, then set one of the pots on the table. She reached out and felt his forehead. “You don’t look well,” she said. “I’ll bet you’ve got a fever. You need some rest. There’s a virus going around, you know.”
Richard smiled, took a twenty from his pocket and gave it to the waitress. “Keep the change,” he said. “And don’t worry, I’ll take care of myself.”
He, too, had noticed the interest the policeman had taken in him and Dwight. But the cop now sat quietly at the counter, toying with his coffee cup. Richard looked around for Dwight. He hadn’t returned yet and seemed to be taking his time.
Richard studied the cop and decided he probably was unsure whether he, Richard, was “wanted” or not. Richard brushed his hand over the stubble on his head. His crappy haircut may have saved him.
Dwight plopped back down in the booth. “Ready to boogie?” he asked.
“Help is on the way, I presume?”
Dwight shrugged. “We’ll find out shortly. In the meantime, I guess we’ll follow your recommendation and do a little recon of our own. Several of the subdivisions aren’t far away,”
They exited the Waffle House and stepped into the parking lot, a checkerboard of bright light and dense shadow. The pre-dawn humidity clutched at Richard like a tepid sauna. A young couple, arm-in-arm, laughing softly, nodded as they walked past him.
The policeman trailed him and Dwight into the lot, but moved toward his own car rather than following them to Dwight’s Mercedes.
Dwight pulled the car onto the main street. “The cop in there was pretty interested in us,” Richard said.
“Well, you, maybe. Yeah, I noticed.”
“I got the impression he wasn’t sure about me, but didn’t have any real reason to check me out.” Richard craned his neck around to see if the patrol car was behind them. “My guess is he’ll proba
bly follow us, then pull us over on some BS traffic stop so he can get a closer look at me and my ID.”
“No he won’t.”
Richard looked at Dwight. “How do you know?”
“He’s got a flat tire.”
“Really. And how did that happen?”
Dwight adjusted the rearview mirror. “I guess my misspent youth in Newark wasn’t all misspent.”
Barashi had left his apartment several hours before sunrise, driving carefully on virtually traffic-less secondary roads, following a circuitous route to where he would lay in wait to attack his first target. Despite his confidence that his subterfuge would work, that his attack, or sequence of attacks, would be successful, he fully understood things could go wrong: that he could have bad luck, that he could have miscalculated, that he might have to fight and flee.
He hadn’t ignored those contingencies. He’d packed a dozen thirty-round magazines for an AKS-74, a weapon that on full automatic could empty a clip in less than three seconds. He had five fragmentation grenades. He carried a Glock in a shoulder holster under a light windbreaker. He’d tucked a 9mm Heckler & Koch under his seat. Ideally, he wouldn’t need to touch the weapons, but if he had to, he’d fight to the death.
At four thirty in the morning he pulled into the parking lot of one of the many megachurches populating north metro Atlanta. The church was less than a minute from his first target. Headlights off, he drove the pickup to the rear of the church’s sprawling lot where three rows of short, white buses were parked. The third row abutted a tall hedge. He found a vacant space between a bus and a maintenance truck. He backed the Dodge Ram into the slot and turned off the engine. He would wait here, hopefully unnoticed until first light.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
NORTH METRO ATLANTA
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24
After Dwight and Richard had been on the road about twenty minutes, Zambit called Dwight back.
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