Bradley took an involuntary step backward and drew in a sharp breath.
Abby’s team ... ! But as a Sniper, she wouldn’t have breached the building, he assured himself. She would’ve been beyond range of the explosion.
Through gnashed teeth, Ryan ordered Team 8B to the site. “Any luck with Webber’s satphone?”
Schaeffer’s head bowed. “There’s still no signal, sir.”
Bradley felt the warmth and strength desert his body. Wretched consequences inundated his thoughts, every atrocity he had witnessed since the EMP.
Oh God ... If the terrorists captured Abby ...
27
District Eight, Colorado
GWEN LEFT THE YELLOW zone, shed her protective layer of plastic, and marched into Doctor Flannigan’s office. Balding with a gray beard, the seventy-two-year-old physician had been a figurehead prior to the EMP. He served on charitable boards and attended fundraisers, more attuned to playing rounds of golf than making hospital rounds.
“I need Sam Klein’s medical records,” she told him, bypassing polite greetings. “The system is denying me access.”
“Gwen, your twelve-hour shift ended three hours ago,” Flannigan said, stroking his beard. “You look like hell. Go home.”
“Not until I check on something. It’ll only take a minute.”
Flannigan hesitated as if gauging her sincerity then unlocked his Chi-pad. Gwen snatched it from his hand, mumbling, “Thank you.” Within a minute, she had navigated the menus, skimmed Sam’s file, and found no allergies, no conditions precluding him from the blue serum.
Her fingers danced over the touch screen, accessing file after file.
“Doctor Flannigan, something’s wrong. Our records indicate that none of the Alameda fever patients was immunized, but I personally administered the red serum to Sam Klein.”
“Even computerized records aren’t infallible,” he said, his indifferent shrug matching his tone.
Gwen stared past him. Her thoughts adjoined like puzzle pieces and revealed a shocking picture. “No, you don’t understand. The recording errors are just the cover-up,” she told him. “The crux of the problem lies with the red serum. Every patient in zone yellow professes to have been vaccinated with it. If that’s true—and I suspect it is—the red serum is completely ineffective.”
Flannigan shot forward in his chair, his tired eyes now blazing with interest. “That would put twenty percent of the population at risk.”
“I know. We have to go to the UW district commander with this.”
“Not we,” Flannigan told her. “You’re going home to get some rest. I’ll bring the issue to Colonel Wu.”
“But I—”
“Gwen, I said go home.” Flannigan plucked the Chi-pad from her hands, and she frowned, knowing he was not entirely concerned about her welfare. He was angling to steal the credit for her discovery, but Gwen elected to let it go. She could discuss the matter with Colonel Wu later—during their private dinner.
When Flannigan was halfway out the door, Gwen chased after him saying, “Find out if it’s safe to administer a secondary dose of the blue serum.”
He glanced back, a patronizing scowl hardening his features. “I’ve been a doctor longer than you’ve been alive. I can handle this.”
Don’t handle it. Resolve it. Gwen struggled to keep the thought to herself.
She stopped by the business office long enough to tap her Chi-phone against the electronic timecard reader, then she headed home. Her four-block, pedestrian commute weaved through a quaint neighborhood packed with bungalows and ranch-style houses. Mature oaks and towering pines skirted the narrow streets, their roots pitching and heaving stretches of crumbling sidewalk.
Gwen’s house was a blue, two bedroom with a cozy wood-burning stove in the family room and a sunny kitchen. This was her sanctuary, but as soon as the front door clacked shut, she immediately sensed something was wrong.
A gloved hand deposited a strip of duct tape over her mouth.
A camouflage-clad forearm tightened around her throat, and her Chi-phone was filched from her pocket.
She could feel her attacker breathing against her ear, then an ominous voice whispered, “Don’t move.”
28
TEradS West Headquarters
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
ABBY WAS MISSING IN action and there wasn’t a damn thing Bradley could do about it—except pray. Despite hours spent inside Memorial Chapel, he couldn’t stem the disturbing parade of history: the beating and rape of Lara Logan in Tahrir Square; the beheadings of Daniel Pearl, James Foley, and Stephen Sotloff videotaped to horrify the world; the remains of Delta Force Soldiers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu; the bodies of Blackwater contractors strung up on a bridge in Fallujah.
By 1700 hours, he was wandering the sprawling base, walking without purpose, without a destination, mind and body searching for a way to mitigate the most profound fear he had ever experienced.
Abby’s strong, he thought, consoling himself. She has a God-given knack for camouflage and evasion. And good instincts.
Back at Sugar Lake, she had saved his life twice during a firefight, a highly unusual prelude to their first kiss. Intoxicating, tantalizing, and arousing—that moment had changed his life forever.
Nearing Leona Creek, he abandoned the road in favor of an overgrown trail, the one Abby had mentioned in her letter. A thick tract of trees blotted out the low afternoon sun. Bushes smacked against his shins. A few vines caught on his bootlaces before tearing free, and it reminded him of the forest surrounding Sugar Lake, most likely why Abby opted to run here.
His mind hopped topics like a jumping bean, from Abby’s hide, to the trip wire that had nearly killed him, to the ballistic scarecrow that had duped a sniper team.
“Abby’s resourceful,” he said as if spoken words carried more weight than mere thoughts. “And resilient. She’ll survive. Hell, she’s probably stalking the bastards who killed her team, picking them off, one by one.”
The densely wooded trail opened into a clearing, and a glimpse of the park sent a shiver through Bradley. Eyes locked on the swing set, his emotions regressed to Summit Springs Elementary School, to the savage rape of that teenaged girl. Armed with just a 1911 Springfield and fifteen rounds, Bradley had been powerless, unable to protect her from thirty-nine AK-47-wielding men. Even if he had sacrificed his life, he couldn’t have changed the outcome for that young girl.
And now, he couldn’t change the outcome for Abby either.
He continued past the park and turned east, cutting across a brown carpet of dead grass that used to be a golf course. Hearing an aircraft, his gaze jogged upward to a C-130 flying low overhead. The sight invoked memories of Haywood Field. Abby had been captured there; and for a few excruciating minutes, Bradley had thought she was dead. Miraculously, she had come through it with just a bruised ankle and a butt stock to the head.
She always finds a way, he thought, regaining some of the optimism the swing set had leeched from him.
Back on Kennet drive, a Humvee pulled up beside him. Seeing Mia, he grimaced.
“Captain Andrews sent me to find you. He wants you back at ops center—ASAP.”
29
District Eight, Colorado
WITH SHAKING HANDS, Gwen Ling peeled the duct tape from her face.
“You have one hour. And you understand what happens if you don’t follow through?”
She nodded, feeling sick to her stomach, then she retrieved her phone from the defunct microwave oven. Apparently, it deadened the signal so no one could eavesdrop.
Good to know, she thought mordantly. Next time I compel someone to commit a crime, I won’t have to worry about witnesses.
Gwen glared at the asshole raiding her pantry, then slammed the front door behind her and backtracked to the medical center.
She was about to break the law. A misdemeanor or felony? Gwen had no idea. However, she was certain that getting caught would destroy h
er career, ruin her reputation, and land her in prison. And jails were no longer temperature-controlled country clubs with cable television and workout facilities. Since the EMP, they were filthy unheated labor camps. Still, the consequences of reneging had been made explicitly clear—and they would be infinitely worse.
Gwen plodded through the lobby and tried to ignore an internal voice screeching, “Turn around. Don’t do this. You’ll get caught.”
Pushing through a set of swinging doors, she noticed an informal conference at the nurses’ station, rife with grim faces, shaking heads, and hushed voices. “What’s wrong?” she asked, expecting that the red serum debacle had become common knowledge.
“Doctor Flannigan, he ...” Sally Parks swiped at welling tears. “He suffered a massive heart attack. By the time we found him it was too late.”
Gwen’s thoughts whirled. She had just spoken with Flannigan an hour ago and he’d looked fine; no indication of exhaustion, shortness of breath, or sweating.
Did the dire news about the red serum precipitate his death?
30
TEradS West Headquarters
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
BRADLEY BOLTED FROM the Humvee before it rolled to a stop and sprinted through TEradS Headquarters to the ops center. Captain Andrews’ head swung toward him, and Bradley belatedly jumped to attention.
Ryan said, “We’ve located her satellite phone ten miles from the ambush site.”
“You made contact with her?” Bradley asked hopefully.
“Not yet. 8B is on site.”
A monitor displayed the live feed from Sergeant Klohr’s helmet camera. A decrepit barn tilted to the right as if it had started to collapse and grew too weary to finish the job. Weathered wooden slats bleeding streaks of red paint stretched toward a lumpy roof riddled with unintended skylights. A set of doors, freed from their rusty hinges by decades of rot, slumped against the structure.
A second, larger monitor presented the camera feed from a man-portable robot designed to enter areas too dangerous for people, an additional precaution after the loss of an entire team to a booby-trapped building.
The robot rolled forward, flattening a forest of weeds, and the barn dilated against the horizon until the festering doors loomed like a cliff. The mechanical minion maneuvered through a narrow gap. Sunlight made the spaces between planks glow like molten steel, and great dusty shafts of light extended downward from the roof. The dirt floor was strewn with patches of hay and softball-sized rocks.
As the camera panned, a satellite phone and tactical headset came into view. Bradley’s eyelids slammed shut then whipped open as if to reset his vision. His chest felt like it was being ripped apart, flesh tearing, organs shredding.
He broke into a sweat.
His entire body began to shake.
Sitting on the ground, swollen and bloody, missing hair and scalp, was an amorphous mass of raw tissue; nose and cheeks battered beyond recognition; mouth hanging open in a silent, gaping cry; buried up to the neck in dirt, encircled by a halo of rock.
“My ... God,” Sergeant Klohr said, his voice breathless with horror. “They fucking stoned her.”
31
District Six, Texas
RIFLE DANGLING FROM his shoulder, Governor Kyle Murphy took his place atop the sun-bleached terra-cotta stairs of the sheriff’s station. A lectern had been erected, and a Chi-phone was perched like a microphone, ready to broadcast his speech throughout the district. Beneath the slanted shelf, Kyle had stashed an old-school bullhorn—just in case.
Several hundred residents were already gathered, milling restlessly, their grumbling voices melding into one antagonistic drone, like the warning growl of a dog.
A copy of Rodriguez’s speech was folded in Kyle’s left pocket; his right contained an address he had composed. Two drastically different messages—and he still hadn’t decided which to deliver.
He watched a convoy of UW vehicles approach. A truck hauling an open-topped dumpster braked to a stop across the street. Six pickup trucks flanked it, each crammed with heavily armed soldiers.
“Yesterday’s massacre was unacceptable,” Kyle began. “Three peacekeepers discharged weapons, two of whom are dead; the third will stand trial. The other six must be released into UW custody.”
Groans and boos crashed over him like a breaking wave, a palpable dissention, impatient and threatening.
“Let me remind you that punishing innocent men is not justice; in fact, it’s worse than allowing the guilty to go free. For more than two centuries, this has been an American tenet, so I am asking you to shoulder your weapons and let Sheriff Montanez escort these men to the UW vehicles.”
Gary and his deputies jostled their way through the swell of bodies. The six peacekeepers followed close behind, bearing the weight of their fallen comrades in two black body bags, enduring a drizzle of verbal abuse punctuated by an occasional glob of saliva.
Tension hung thick in the air, a dense pocket of volatile gas easily detonated by even the tiniest of sparks; and two-thirds of the way through the crowd, their progress halted.
Kyle swore under his breath.
Harvey Rigby was refusing to step aside. Embittered over his wife’s death in yesterday’s massacre, his face seemed to glow with a craving for vengeance.
Kyle reached for the bullhorn. “Harvey, these men did not shoot Julia. Her killer is in custody, and there will be justice. I promise you. So please ... let them pass.”
The silence lengthened, each second intensifying the pressure that was tightening around Kyle’s chest.
Gary wended his way to the right and guided the entourage past Harvey. The widower’s glare bucked between the peacekeepers, impaling and hate-filled, but he did not impede their advance.
Kyle’s sense of relief immediately faded. He removed both speeches from his pockets, smoothed them out, and laid them on the lectern’s slanted shelf. His gaze seesawed between them, weighing the turmoil each would generate. Both choices would have far-reaching consequences for District Six, for the entire country; and he couldn’t procrastinate any longer. This was the moment. He had to choose.
“As a result of the massacre,” he began. “An order has been issued mandating the confiscation of firearms within District Six.”
Verbal protests erupted, irate and defiant, but Kyle continued speaking via the bullhorn. “I have to do what I believe is right, despite the backlash that I know is coming.”
He unshouldered his rifle strap and hoisted the weapon above his head. “Two years ago, I would have surrendered this weapon without a second thought. But in post-EMP America, losing my M4 is tantamount to losing a limb. I will not relinquish my firearms. Not to the United World peacekeepers. Not to the U.S. military. Not today. Not ever!”
The Chi-phone broadcast abruptly terminated, replaced by a scrolling message that instructed citizens to turn over their weapons.
As chants of Mur-phy Mur-phy swirled, Kyle keyed the bullhorn. “I’ve made my choice, but before you decide, understand that the consequences of noncompliance are severe. You will be designated as a terrorist.”
“What are they gonna do? Send the TEradS after us?” Harvey shouted. “Are they gonna send your daughter to kill you, Governor?”
“I am proud that my daughter and son-in-law are both members of the TEradS. And I can’t imagine them obeying such unconstitutional orders.” He couldn’t picture Ryan Andrews issuing them either. Then again, he never would have anticipated Major Rodriguez’s actions.
“If the military comes after us, I say we boycott the refineries and ammo factories!” Harvey bellowed.
For Kyle, that was a nuclear deterrent, a weapon he hoped he would never have to use. “You have a personal choice to make,” he said, redirecting the conversation. “If you are willing to relinquish your Second Amendment rights, surrender your weapons to the UW troops across the street.”
Minutes elapsed. Civilians who had been watching on Chi-phones spilled into the sid
e streets, hungry for information.
No one moved toward the UW convoy.
Giving a long sigh, Kyle keyed the bullhorn and said, “It is my understanding that the people of District Six have spoken. The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed!”
Cheers pulsed through the air, an energy fraught with constructive and destructive potential, the fine line between rallying public opinion and inciting a mob.
Did I just start a fire I won’t be able to control?
32
TEradS West Headquarters
Langden Air Force Base, Texas
FOR TWO HOURS, CAPTAIN Ryan Andrews had been scouring Langden Air Force Base, the chapels, the mess halls, the barracks, the hangouts, and he had yet to find Bradley.
Ryan had glimpsed the Marine’s face before he stormed out of the operations center. Grief had siphoned the color from his complexion, agony shuddered through his jaw, and then every facial muscle contracted, clenching to shut out a reality too horrible to comprehend.
The sight had burned into Ryan, searing that indelible impression on heart and mind, exacerbating his sense of responsibility. A barrage of should haves and buts trilled through his thoughts. He should have deployed a robotic camera at the horse farm, but they were scarce following the EMP and the playbook for stateside terrorists had not included bombs—until a few days ago. He should have questioned the UW intel, but they had been a reliable source for almost a year.
“What’s done, is done,” Ryan muttered to himself.
He had spoken to Mechanics, Ground Crews, and Pilots; and although no one had seen Bradley, they had all heard about the tragedy. The velocity of gossip on military bases was legendary, rivaled only by the speed of light. Still, he appreciated the expressions of outrage and condolence.
By 2200 hours, exhausted physically and mentally, Ryan trudged back toward Memorial Chapel. Its white clapboard façade cut through the moonlight like a giant tombstone, marking the location where his search had begun. Frustrated, he yanked open the heavy wooden door. In the first pew, he saw Bradley, hunched over, elbows trussed against knees, hands clutching the top of his head.
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