“I told you what I need.”
“A team leader?”
He nodded. “I need to start training the new team today because if we’re really lucky, Mr. Ledger, that team may have to go into the field within days, maybe within hours. I don’t have time to coax you or stroke your ego or appeal to your patriotism.”
“So what? You wanted to make me afraid?”
“An apocalypse is an abstract and unreal concept. The sudden loss of everyone you love and care about is not. Time is not our friend.”
“You’re saying that there are more of these walker things, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Even though I expected that answer it was like a punch in the mouth. He said, “We haven’t stopped this thing yet, Mr. Ledger. At best we slowed it down by a few days.”
“You should have figured that out before. It’s the logical-”
“We did figure it out, but we had nowhere to go with the supposition. Our code breakers have been working round the clock to determine the location of any cells connected to the one you took down. We know where one is because of the truck the task force tailed. We have not risked hitting that site because there may be more sites and we don’t want to panic these people. Play it wrong and they could go dark and we’d lose the trail, or they could release the plague right away. We’ve recovered enough information to make us reasonably sure they are sticking to a prearranged deadline, so we don’t want to hurry that along. Because we did not intercept that truck, and did not raid the place to which it went, we’re trying to make them believe they’ve given us the slip. The raid, after all, was half a day after the truck left.”
“Trucks,” I corrected. “There were two. We tailed one and lost one.”
“Too bloody right you did,” muttered Courtland, and I gave her a hard look to which she merely cocked a challenging eyebrow.
“So why the urgency to train a hit team if you’re not about to make a hit?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s my intention to have a team covertly infiltrate the one facility we have under surveillance.”
“Infiltrate to what end? To locate other cells or to find more walkers?”
“Either will do.”
I swallowed a dry throat. “What makes you think that the other hypothetical cells will still be in place? Once this cell here at this warehouse went dark the others would probably have followed a protocol of some kind-”
“Very likely,” Major Courtland cut in, “but we have to go forward with what leads we have. On the upside, however, the other facility shows no sign of activity, no rats fleeing, so maybe they think they’re clear. In the absence of more intelligence a quiet infiltration is our safest option.”
I frowned. “And with all the military special ops and guys like SWAT and HRT you want to form a new team? There are guys out there with years more experience than me. Does the name ‘Delta Force’ ring any bells with you people?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Church said. He gestured toward the far door, the one with the heavy scanner. “The other potential team leaders are in the adjoining room. Each of them is tough, experienced, and aware of the threat. All of them are active military-two Rangers, one Navy, one Marine Force Recon, and yes, even one from Delta Force. All of them have more combat and tactical experience than you do, though admittedly you bring other qualities to the game. You’re all unique in one way or another but we don’t have time to discuss that at the moment. I need to get the team leader status sorted out right now.”
“What do you want us to do? Play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets the job?”
“Grace?” he said, and she went over to the heavy-duty door and unlocked it.
“If you’ll come this way, Detective.”
I stood up slowly. “This is a lot of James Bond bullshit to decide a human resources issue isn’t it?”
Church remained seated. He nodded his head toward the doorway, so I walked over and peered inside. Five guys in civilian clothes: three sitting and two standing. All of them looked tough and all of them looked either confused or pissed off. They seemed frozen in an agitated tableau as if the door opening had interrupted them in the middle of a heated debate.
I turned back to Church. “You still haven’t told me how you want us to sort this out.”
He made that face again that might have been a smile. I’ve seen the big hunting cats make that same kind of face. “Think outside the box, Mr. Ledger.”
“Okay,” I said, “but you have to pick up the tab afterward.”
He gave me a single short nod.
I stepped into the room. All of the men were looking me up and down, a couple of them giving me evil stares that would have scared the paint off a tank. Courtland left and pulled the door closed behind her. I heard the heavy lock engage.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gault / The Hotel Ishtar, Baghdad / Five days ago
GAULT WAS ON the road, moving in a roundabout way from Amirah’s bunker in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan across the border to Iran, where he changed identities three times in fourteen hours and then entered a safe house run by a client of a client, where he ate, made some calls, and then changed identities again-back to Sebastian Gault. Gault was welcome in Iran and most other countries because his company was one of the world’s top suppliers of pharmaceuticals for humanitarian aid. He traveled with three kindhearted but clueless members of the World Health Organization as they visited remote villages in western Iran where a TB outbreak had been reported. Gault did a few stand-ups for a Swiss news service about the need for swift action in stemming the spread of the new strain of TB, and then thanked the Iranian government for allowing free passage for the WHO doctors. When he crossed the border into Iraq he was met by a military escort of British soldiers who got him safely all the way to Baghdad.
Toys met him in the lobby and they shook hands.
“I trust you had a comfortable trip,” said his personal assistant, taking Gault’s bag and leading him to the elevator. As they crossed the lobby they were both aware that everyone was looking at them. Toys was a not tall man but he had tall energy. He was slender, fit, and had impeccable posture; and he always managed to look cool and well groomed no matter where they were. Gault had seen him ankle deep in the mosquito swamps of Kenya looking as collected as if he were at a cocktail party at Cannes. But to anyone watching it was immediately clear which of them was the alpha. Gault was taller, more physically imposing, with swept-back hair and piercing dark eyes. He was ruggedly handsome, where Toys was delicately so. By himself Toys could command almost any room, but his light dimmed considerably in Gault’s presence. Gault knew this; and so did Toys. They were both comfortable with the arrangement.
They chitchatted on the lift, talking of relatively unimportant Gen2000 matters. Once they were in the suite of rooms they shared at the Hotel Ishtar Toys swept the place with the newest generation of Interceptor surveillance sensors and everything came up clean. Even so, they avoided any sensitive topics for an hour, at which point Toys swept it again, knowing that surveillance teams often deactivate active listening in the first few minutes after someone checks in to a hotel knowing that a smart spy would sweep the room. They typically reactivate their bugs in forty minutes, so he gave it a full hour. It still came up clean.
Toys busied himself with unpacking while Gault took a hot bath. Later, with Gault snugged into a bathrobe and ensconced in a cushy armchair, a tall gin and tonic quietly melting on a nearby table, Toys settled down onto a more decorative faux Louis XIV chair, legs crossed, rolling a neat whiskey between his palms.
“You got a text message while you were in the bath,” Toys said primly. “Just one word: ‘Clean.’ That’s from El Musclehead?”
Gault smiled and nodded. “His team field-tested an entirely new generation of the Seif al Din today. That was the code to let me know the operation was successful.” He gave Toys the details.
“That’s disgusting,” Toys said, but if he had any real emotional reaction to the slaughter not one drop of it registered on his face.
“It’s a solid step forward,” Gault reminded him.
