per hour, and there wasn’t much deck left. If he could get Perez to slow down and turn, he could take him down by ramming him.
They continued to charge forward, even with each other. The decking suddenly turned green, and Locke saw that they had crossed onto a miniature golf course. At the end was the deck’s aft railing and a ten-foot-tall balloon clown advertising the kid-friendly course.
Perez was concentrating on Locke, so he didn’t see the aft railing fast approaching. Locke did. He hit his brakes with full force, skidding on the artificial turf, and realized that he wasn’t going to stop in time.
He did the only thing he could. He laid the bike down, aiming for the clown, and crouched into the fetal position to protect his head.
By the time he laid the motorcycle on its side, he had slowed to less than 20 mph. The impact rattled Locke when he hit the clown, but he bounced off. The balloon reduced his momentum enough so that when he hit the railing, all it did was crunch his side. Except for some rug burns and bruises, he came to rest unscathed.
Perez wasn’t so lucky. Instead of laying his bike down, Perez tried to use the brakes. There wasn’t enough room to slow down, so he crashed into the railing, vaulting over the handlebars and out of view.
Locke heard screams from below. He rushed to the railing and looked over the side.
The aft end of this deck was not the aft end of the ship. Instead of falling to the water, Perez landed on the deck below. He lay next to the Suzuki, his neck cocked at a lethal angle.
It suddenly occurred to Locke that Perez insisted on leaving Dilara behind. In the heat of the chase, Locke had forgotten about her. Why would Perez do that, unless…
Locke sprinted back to his cabin. He launched himself into the room, his pistol drawn.
“Dilara!” he shouted. “Dilara!”
No answer. He checked both rooms, but there was no sign of her.
When he looked in the bathroom, he knew why. Someone had taken her.
There on the bathroom floor was her father’s locket.
THIRTY-EIGHT
When Locke couldn’t find Dilara in the cabin, he went back out to search for her, but when passengers recognized him as one of the people involved in the motorcycle chase, he was detained by Genesis Dawn security. The police took him into custody, and he spent two hours in a station interrogation room frantically explaining what had happened. The police weren’t convinced.
Locke thought he was about to be brought up on charges for attacking and killing an FBI agent, not to mention making a mess of the ship, when the door opened and Agent Trina Harris walked in. She still looked a little bleary.
“Leave us alone,” she said. The detectives left the room.
“Are you all right?” Locke said.
“Just a bad headache. Thanks for your help. You saved my life.”
Locke was surprised. “How did you know?”
“I just spoke to Washington. They didn’t know that Perez and I came to Miami. He was my senior, so I was following his orders to come down here. Leaving me behind would have been too suspicious. I thought we were chasing your lead, but when we got into the ship cabin, he pulled his gun on me. He tied me up. The only thing I could get out of him was that he was going to have a little fun with me before he dumped me overboard at sea.”
“I’m guessing he was going to dump me overboard as well. He didn’t shoot me because of the noise. Did you hear any of our conversation?”
“Just a little. I was pretty groggy. He pistol-whipped me once I was tied and gagged. I was coming out of it when you came in. What the hell is going on?”
Locke told her about Garrett and the device he suspected was hidden in his suite.
“If Perez was staying on board,” Harris said, “wouldn’t he have been infected by the bioweapon, too?”
“I’m sure Garrett didn’t tell him about that part. Just wanted him to get rid of you and me. Perez didn’t know he was being sacrificed for Garrett’s version of the greater good, and he probably didn’t want to believe my theory when I told him.”
“How could this happen? We do thorough background checks on every agent. If he was a member of the Holy Hydronastic Church, we should have known.”
“There’s got to be a link to Garrett.”
“We’re checking that out now, but his FBI record seems clean.” She began reading from his file. “Perez grew up in Dallas, Texas. Mother died in childbirth. Father was a Dallas detective who was injured in the line of duty and left the force. Didn’t do much after that except collect disability checks. Perez was valedictorian of his high school and was accepted to Yale on a scholarship. Majored in psychology…”
“That’s got to be it!” He looked at Perez’s graduation date. “Garrett bragged about going to Yale, and the two of them are about the same age. They must have been friends in college. We’ve only got a few more hours before the Genesis Dawn was supposed to sail. Whatever device is in Garrett’s cabin might be on a timer. We need to get in there and find it before it activates.”
“I’ve got ten agents from the Miami office on the ship.”
Locke brought up the subject that had been burning him up with worry ever since he found his cabin empty. “There’s another problem,” he said, his jaw clenched. “They’ve taken Karen.”
Harris looked confused. “Karen? Who’s Karen?”
Locke flushed.
“Then we have to get into his cabin as soon as possible.”
“I need to be there.” That was nonnegotiable.
Harris paused, then nodded. “All right. Let’s go. I’ll set it up on the way.”
“No warrant this time?” Locke asked.
“In an emergency like this, we don’t need a warrant.”
Thirty minutes later, they raided Garrett’s suite. One of the FBI agents used a master key and walked in dressed like a steward. Two men inside confronted the fake steward and then were taken by surprise when the rest of the agents rushed in, capturing the guards without firing a shot. To Locke’s chagrin, neither Garrett nor Dilara were there.
He examined the room and found a metal case the size of a large valise sitting on a bureau, right where he was expecting it. A tube extended from the case into a hole that had been drilled in the wall. Locke flipped open a keypad and saw a display counting down. It would reach zero in another ten hours, three hours after the Genesis Dawn was scheduled to leave port. The case latch had a combination lock.
Locke asked one of the two guards to open the case. The guard said he’d been paid a lot of money to keep the room from being disturbed, especially the case, and that he didn’t know what was inside or how to open it.
The suitcase might be booby trapped. If Locke tried to open it, a bomb might go off or the device might activate immediately, infecting everyone in the room. He requested a hazmat team to safely encase it in an impermeable enclosure.
They put the case, tube and all, into a plastic casing that was airtight. Now if it activated, the bioweapon would be contained.
“This needs to be analyzed right away,” Locke told Agent Harris. “We need to know what we’re up against. And there are only a few labs in the country that are qualified to safely handle Level 4 biohazards.” Level 4 biohazards included the deadliest biological agents known to man, such as the Ebola and Marburg viruses. In addition to Garrett’s high-tech lab, Locke had worked on the containment facility at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick in Maryland when they had wanted to reinforce it against terrorist attacks.
“I know our facility in Miami can’t do it,” Harris said.
“The closest is the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta,” Locke said. “I have a jet at Miami airport. I can
