“This is why this is such a major threat,” Church interrupted quietly. “There has always been a lag factor with diseases, even weaponized diseases, and we don’t have that here.”
“Okay. Message understood. If any infected people get out we’re screwed.”
“And when in doubt, Captain,” said Church, “shoot to kill.”
“Dios mio,” Rudy murmured, but I met Church’s stare and gave him a microscopic nod.
“What about inoculation? Can you juice my team in case we get bit?”
“No way,” Hu said. “Remember, the core of this thing is a prion and a prion is simply a misfolded normal protein. Any vaccine that would destroy the prion would destroy all forms of that protein. Once we identify all the parasites we might be able to kill that, and maybe that’ll do some good. No, I think that your team has to consider prophylactic measures instead.”
“Is this thing airborne? I mean, if all we have to do is protect against a bite, then we can suit up with Dragon Skin or Interceptor, or some other kind of body armor. There’s plenty of stuff on the market.”
“I don’t think it’s airborne,” Hu said dubiously, “but it might be vapor borne, which means spit or sweat might carry it. In a tight room at high temperatures you might want a hazmat suit of some kind.”
“Hard to fight in a hazmat,” I pointed out.
Church held up a finger. “I can make a call and have Saratoga Hammer Suits here by morning.” I guess all of us looked blank, so he added, “Permeable chemical warfare protective overgarments for domestic preparedness. It’s a composite filter fabric based on highly activated and hard carbon spheres fixed onto textile carrier fabrics. It’s tough, but light enough to permit agile movement as well as unarmed and armed combat. It’s been out for a bit, but I can get the latest generation. I have a friend in the industry.”
“You always have a friend in the industry,” Hu said under his breath, which got a flicker of a smile from Grace. A DMS in-joke apparently.
Church stepped away and opened his cell phone. When he came back he said, “A helo will meet us at the staging area for the crab plant raid by six A.M. with fifty suits.”
“I guess you do have a friend in the industry,” Rudy said.
“And the big man scores,” Hu said, and held up his hand for a high five but Church stared at him with calm, dark eyes. Hu coughed, lowered his hand, and turned to me. “If you go in with body armor and those suit thingees you should be okay. Unless ”
“Unless what?”
“Unless there are a lot of them.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“And unless there’s more to this disease than we think.”
“What are the chances of that, Doctor?”
He didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
“Damn,” I said.
Chapter Fifty
Amirah / The Bunker / Tuesday, June 30
THE PHONE WOKE her and for a moment Amirah did not know where she was. A fragment of a dream flitted past the corner of her eye and though she could not quite define its shape or grasp its content, she had an impression of a man’s face-maybe Gault, maybe El Mujahid-sweating, flushed with blood, eyes intense as he raised himself above her on two stiffened arms and grunted and thrust his hips forward. It was not a lovemaking dream. It had more of the vicious indifference of a rape, even in the fleeting half-remembrance of it. The most lasting part of the dream was not the image of the man-whichever man it had been-but from a deep and terrible coldness that entered her with each thrust, as if the man atop her was dead, without heat.
Amirah shook herself and stared at the phone on her desk that continued to ring. She glanced around her office-it was empty, though she could see workers in the lab on the other side of the one-way glass wall. She cleared her throat, picked up the phone, and said, “Yes?”
“Line?”
“It’s clear.” She said it automatically, but then pressed the button on the scrambler. “It’s clear now,” she corrected.
“He’s on his way.” Gault’s voice was soft and in those four words Amirah could hear the subtle layers of meaning that she always suspected filtered everything he said.
“How is he?”
“No longer pretty.”
Amirah laughed. “He was never pretty.”
“He’s no longer handsome, then,” Gault corrected.
“Is he in much pain?”
“Nothing he can’t handle. He’s very stoic, your husband. I think if he had a bullet in his chest he would shrug it off as inconsequential. Few men have his level of physical toughness.”
“He’s a brute,” Amirah said, flavoring her voice with disgust.
There was a pause at the other end as if Gault was assessing her words, or perhaps her tone. Did he suspect? she wondered, and not for the first time.
“He’ll have some time to rest while he travels. He needs to regain his strength. We provided him with plenty of drugs to keep the pain under control; and let’s face it, stoicism only really works when people are watching. We don’t want him to fall into despair while he’s all alone in his cabin.”
Amirah said nothing. She probably should have, she knew, but the image of the mighty El Mujahid sitting alone and in pain in a tiny interior cabin on some rusty old freighter was compelling.
Into the silence, and as if reading her mind, Gault said, “Don’t fret, my love; I own the ship’s surgeon as well as the captain.”
“I’m not fretting, Sebastian. My concern is that his wounds not become infected. We need him to be in the best possible shape for the mission.” She was careful to use the word “mission” now, having slipped once before when she called it the “cause.” She wasn’t sure Gault had noted the error, but he probably had. He was like that.
“Of course, of course,” he said soothingly. “Everything is taken care of. He’ll be fine and the plan will go off as we planned. Everything is perfect. Trust me.”
“I do,” she said, and she softened her voice. “I trust you completely.”
“Do you love me?” he asked, a laugh in his voice.
“You know I do.”
“And I,” he said, “will always love you.” With that he disconnected the call.
Amirah leaned back in her chair and stared thoughtfully at the phone, her lips compressed, the muscles at the sides of her jaw bunched tight. She waited five minutes, thinking things through, and then she opened the bottom drawer of her desk and removed the satellite phone. It was compact, expensive, and new. A gift from Gault. It had tremendous range and there were signal relays built into the ceiling of the laboratory bunker so that her call would reach up into space and would from there be bounced anywhere on the planet. Even as far as a helicopter flying across the ocean to catch a freighter that was far out to sea.
Chapter Fifty-One
The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / Tuesday, June 30; 9:58 P.M.
RUDY AND I walked down the corridor together. Church had lingered to speak with Hu. I looked at my watch. “Hard to believe this is the same day, you know?”
But he didn’t want to talk about it out in the corridor. I asked a guard where our rooms were and he led us to a pair of former offices across the hall from each other. My room was about the size of a decent hotel bedroom, though it had clearly been repurposed from an office or storeroom. No windows. Functional gray carpet. But the bed in the corner of the room was my own from my apartment. The computer workstation was mine, as was the big-