to date.”
“Freaky girl?” Mercy asked.
The man nodded. “Yeah, Frankie something or other.”
“Thanks,” Jack said. To Mercy and Ted, “Let’s go.”
They left the kitchen for the dining area. Behind them, the girl shouted, “Hey, what about these guys!”
Jack ignored her. If those were the last bodies he left behind tonight, he’d be lucky.
If the decision were Eshmail Nouri’s to make, he would have strangled Ayman al-Libbi, left his body in a Dumpster, and gone back to the 213 Lounge he owned and managed just off Wilshire Boulevard. He was tempted to disobey orders and do it anyway, but that was just his independence talking. Eight years living in the United States, living and playing as an American, had given him a veneer of rebellion. But it was thin and did not seep into his heart, which had been with the Ayatollah Khomeini and was with the ayatollahs still. He would do as he was ordered, even if he thought it was stupid.
And it was stupid, in his professional opinion. The ayatollahs had seen fit to plant Nouri and his compatriots in the United States long before the Americans had increased their watchfulness. Of course, after 9/11, Nouri himself and each of his companions had been questioned, but he had already been in the country for years; he was careful to communicate infrequently with the rest of his cell, and often only through handwritten letters that could not be traced. He was indistinguishable from the thousands of Iranians who had emigrated over the years.
Which was his point. Nouri understood that he was a valuable asset. His entire cell was a precious weapon kept hidden by the ayatollahs and, if Allah willed it, they would someday come forth to strike a blow against the Americans. He knew the ayatollahs had tried to build other cells in recent years, but almost all had failed, thanks to American intelligence. To risk one of the few well-placed groups at the whim of Ay-man al-Libbi, who had by all accounts become a useless infidel, seemed reckless.
Not seemed reckless,
Eshmail did not yet know about the virus or CTU. All he knew was that at long last his cell had been activated. They were to kill three people, one of whom was already dead, and another who would soon be eliminated.
Still, he wished he could kill Ayman al-Libbi when all was said and done.
Jack stopped the car in the dirt lot where the paved road ended. There was one car, a silver Volvo, already parked there.
“Could they be ahead of us again?” Mercy said as they got out.
Jack drew his gun and walked over to the car. “It’s still warm and ticking.” There was a moon out, but it had been a long time since Jack had hunted anyone by moonlight alone. “We should take flashlights. Have either of you been up this trail before?”
“I have,” Ted said. “It’s hiking, not mountain climbing, but parts of the trail are tough. The waterfall is about two miles up.”
“We could call the sheriff ’s mountain rescue unit,” Mercy suggested.
“Do it,” Jack said. Mercy got on her phone and went through 911.
“Their ETA is more than twenty minutes for the helicopter,” she said after a moment. “No one’s going to get here any sooner.”
“Let’s see what we can do until they get here,” Jack said, stopping to reload the magazines for his SigSauer. He popped one magazine into the handle and racked the slide. “Let’s go.”
18. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
“Moving at last,” President Barnes said.
Dr. Diebold, still wearing the biohazard suit, nodded. “Yes, sir. The containment tube is complete. It will take you straight down to the hazmat vehicle. You and the others will ride to National Health Services. We have a bio containment unit there.”
Carter nodded. “Advance teams have already cleared the facility, sir.”
Barnes turned to Xu Boxiong. “Sir, after you.”
Xu bowed and smiled. There was nothing like a crisis, Barnes thought, to turn acquaintances into friends or enemies. If either country’s security had botched this up, the other leader would have been at his counterpart’s throat. But both countries had screwed this pooch. They were in it together in every way.
“I trust the United States will not offer too much of a complaint if the People’s Republic takes stronger steps to break the separatist movement in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region?” Xu observed casually.
“Probably not,” Barnes replied. “And I trust that China will offer the G8 some movement that allows us to save face on humanitarian issues.”
Xu nodded. “I believe some steps can be taken.”
They stepped out through the airlock and into a long, clear plastic tunnel. Mitch Rasher was there, his round body hidden behind the bulk of the environmental suit. “Everything’s been handled, sir,” he said. “And it’s been done in coordination with the Chinese staff,” he added with a bow to President Xu. “Both offices issued statements that you both came down with minor cases of food poisoning—”
“You didn’t say poisoning?” Barnes interrupted.
“Of course not, sir,” Rasher said. “But that was the underlying message.”
“Isn’t it a bit too obvious if we two made the same claim?” Barnes asked. It seemed to him a lot like asking for three cards in a game of five-card stud.
“We got lucky there, Mr. President,” Rasher said, sounding pleased even through the muffled effects of his headgear and microphone. “Mr. Novartov of Russia actually did come down with food poisoning. So it all works out.”
“So this containment is good,” Barnes said as they reached the end of the plastic tunnel, which was attached to a huge yellow hazardous materials vehicle. “How’s our other containment?”
“One hundred percent so far, Mr. President,” his top aide replied. “Of course, this meeting was top secret anyway, so very few people knew you were here in the first place. The virus story itself is bound to get out — too many police and NHS personnel know about it. But your infection is known to very few.”
“Until I keel over,” Barnes said grimly. “Doctor, are you any closer to understanding this virus?”
Diebold shook his head inside his suit. “No, sir. I have Celia Alexis, one of my top people, working on it. But, sir, we’ve been studying Marburg and Ebola for years and we don’t have cures for them. I understand that the terrorist who did this claims to have a vaccine. Are we trying to locate that person?”
Barnes nodded. “We have people working on it.”
Jack put one foot in front of the other carefully, settling his foot into the ground gently, then putting his weight down in order to avoid making too much noise. He hadn’t turned on his flashlight yet — it would do more to warn the driver of the car they’d seen at the start of the trail than it would do to illuminate his path.
The Temescal Canyon trail rose steadily from its entrance off Sunset Boulevard and up into the mountains, running parallel to a thin ribbon of water that traveled a tortuous path from the mountains down to the Pacific Ocean. With the exception of a small Park Services ranger station at the entrance, the canyon was completely rustic, a gateway into the Santa Monica Mountains Preserve, a wide tract of wild land that ran along the backbone
