Finally the American stood and spoke in a booming voice: “I am the King of Fear. When a bomb goes off, it has my kiss upon it. Terror stirs the pot of chaos, and in chaos the Seven Kings thrive. I arm the faithful and the fanatical. I allow the disenfranchised a voice. Not to serve their ends, but to serve mine. Ours.”
Then all of them together raised their voices and roared out, “We are the Seven Kings. We are chaos!”
They sat, but the echo of their words punched all the walls and pounded Gault and Toys like physical blows. No one spoke until the last echo faded to a whisper.
The American smiled a devil’s smile. “And we would like you to join us, Sebastian. We have an opening at our table.”
“Opening?” murmured Gault faintly. His eyes were fever bright.
“We would like you to be our new King of Plagues.”
“Jesus,” hissed Toys, and grabbed Gault’s arm, but Gault laid his hand on Toys’ wrist and slowly pushed him off.
“The King of Plagues,” echoed Gault. He looked at each man … each King. He looked at their thrones and then at the empty throne, and as he did so he touched the bandages that still covered his ruined and remade face.
Toys leaned closed and whispered to him, “Be careful, Sebastian … . This is too weird … even for us.”
But Gault was not listening.
“What do you say, Sebastian?” asked the American. “We need a man of vision, a man who understands the power of self-interest. We need a man who grasps the many wonderful and life-changing potentials that wait in the RNA and proteins of a virus. Someone who is brave enough to use these pathogens like fists.” He paused and every eye in the room was on Gault. “Are you that man?”
Gault took an absent step forward, and then another, and a third until he stood at the edge of the table. He rested his fingertips on the cool polished wood and stared for a long minute down at his own distorted reflection.
Then, slowly, he raised his eyes and looked at the assembly of Kings.
“Yes,” he said in a voice that was more deadly than smallpox. “Oh … yes!”
Toys felt a pain in his heart as if some unseen hand had stabbed him. He looked at the rapt expression on Gault’s face, and then he closed his eyes.
He did not—
Chapter Twenty-seven
Fair Isle Research Endeavor
The Shetland Isles
December 18, 2:38 P.M. GMT
We landed behind a stand of oak trees, scattering goats and gulls. Once the door was open I peered through the window just in time to see another chopper set down, a muscular Merlin HC3 transport chopper. The doors slid open and a dozen Barrier agents in SARATOGA HAMMER chemical warfare suits deployed and ran to formation past the outside edge of the rotor wash.
Prebble, Hu, and Dietrich climbed out of our chopper, but Church shifted to stand between me and the door.
“Hold on,” he said. His dark eyes, hidden behind the tinted lenses of his glasses, were like black marbles. “I’m sorry to have cut your vacation short.”
“No, you’re not,” I said.
“No, I’m not,” he admitted. “You’ve been through a lot and I’m throwing you into the fire. Dr. Sanchez tells me that it’s too soon, that you need more time to heal. Tell me if I’m making a mistake.”
I wanted to laugh. We both knew I’d rather be back in my hotel room in London. Or in the middle of the Sahara. Anywhere but here. Sometimes the absurd nature of what I do hits me. Here I was, a former Baltimore detective still young enough to kick some ass in a pickup b-ball game; a guy with a father who just won a nail-biter of an election to become the new mayor; a brother who was also a cop as well as a husband and a father to my only nephew; a guy who should have been working cases back home and maybe scouting for a wife of my own. With all that, here I was pulling on a combat-modified hazmat suit and gun belt because I was about to enter a building filled with some of the deadliest and more virulent diseases known to modern man, a building held by a lunatic who was threatening to release those diseases. A man I’d almost certainly have to kill and who might be part of a huge secret society trying to tear down the world.
How the hell did that become normal for me? Or for anyone?
Was it too soon? How could I—or anyone in my position—answer that question?
“You didn’t make a mistake,” I said.
He nodded but didn’t move.
“Is there something else?” I asked.
For a moment Church’s mouth was a tight and lipless line of tension, almost a snarl. “I didn’t want to tell you this in front of the others. I debated waiting until after you finished with the lab, but I didn’t think you’d thank me for that.”
“That’s ominous as shit, Boss. Spill it.”
“There’s been another incident.”
He told me about the explosions at Area 51. I could feel my stomach turning to icy slush, and there was a roaring in my ears that wasn’t the wind.
“Lucky Team, the investigators, the staff at the base,” Church said. “Gone. All of them.”
“And Echo Team? Top and Bunny—?”
He shook his head. “We lost two. Sergeants Gomez and Henderson. The rest were outside. Scrapes and bruises, but no other casualties. They are, however, the only survivors. Everyone else at the base is dead.”
“I-I can’t believe it,” I stammered.
I didn’t know Henderson, but Ricky Gomez had been in active training around the time I took off for Europe. Nice kid from Brooklyn. His brother played single-A ball for the Cyclones. Now Ricky and Henderson and all the others were dust. Just like the four thousand at the London. Ash and bones. I could hear something ripping behind my eyes and a bloody haze clouded my vision. I had to force my voice to sound normal. I used the Cop voice, not the Killer’s.
“What do we know?” I demanded.
“Next to nothing. Nellis is sending a team and I’ve scrambled our people from the casino. We have Jerry Spencer’s number two, Bess Tanaka, out there working the scene.” Church paused. “So far no one has come forward to claim responsibility.”
“Has to be the Kings.”
“Probably,” he said, “but the unfortunate truth is that they’re not our only enemies.”
“What’s our play?”
“That’s being determined now. I’ve advised the President to keep this out of the media for as long as possible; otherwise the whole base will become a circus. The Internet and cable talk shows are already buzzing with conspiracy theories about the Hospital. This would be gasoline on that fire. We may have to spin a cover story to make it work.”
I nodded. “How the fuck does someone take out an entire military base? I mean, seriously—a secret and ultrahigh-security military base?”
“I can only think of one way,” Church said, his face turning once more to a mask of cold iron.
