They raced up the bare concrete steps, the only sounds the clatter of their footfalls and the echoing rasp of their breath. At first, she kept pace with him. But as they were turning toward the second flight, he heard her let out a gasp as she hunched over to brace one hand against her knee. He slowed. “You okay?”
“Don’t wait for me! Keep going.”
He was maybe five seconds ahead of her when he slapped open the heavy firedoors on the third floor, his Beretta in his hand.
Rigged out in a Crusader costume with fake chain mail and a white surcoat marked by a giant red cross, General Gerald T. Boyd stood in the center of the hall, his hands on his hips, his attention focused on a closed gray door marked MAINTENANCE. A second man-younger, leaner, with a military buzzcut that clashed badly with his medieval squire’s costume-had one foot wedged in the partially open doors of the service elevator.
At Jax’s catapulted entrance, both men jerked around. The squire had a 9mm Glock half out of the holster hidden beneath his hauberk when Jax pumped two bullets into his chest.
The force of the impact knocked the squire back into the elevator. The doors slammed shut and the elevator whirled away with a ding.
“You bastard,” roared Boyd. Arms spread, he plowed into Jax and enveloped him in a deadly bear hug, just as October burst through the firedoor from the stairs.
With the General’s beefy arms squeezing the air out of his lungs, Jax wheezed, “The HVAC room. Quick.”
Arms pinned to his sides, lungs bursting, Jax pointed the Beretta’s muzzle vaguely in the direction of Boyd’s foot and pulled the trigger. He heard the bullet ricochet off the floor and smelled burned leather, cloth, and flesh. Boyd roared again and squeezed harder.
Jax pulled the trigger again and missed. The pressure on his lungs tightened. He could hear his ears ringing. His vision dimmed. He looked up into the General’s furious red face and knew a moment of disbelief. He was being crushed to death by a giant crazy general just feet away from where a mad scientist was unleashing a plague that could wipe out a good quarter of the world’s population.
Bending one knee, he braced his foot against the wall behind him and pushed. The General staggered back just enough to enable Jax to shift the angle of the Beretta’s barrel and fire again.
This time, the bullet found a more sensitive portion of the General’s anatomy. The steely gray eyes widened in shock and pain and disbelief. The pressure on Jax’s chest eased and he slammed the top of his head into the General’s face.
Boyd staggered back. Jax brought up the Beretta and fired point-blank into the red Crusader’s cross.
74
Tobie thrust open the gray door and fell into a hot musty room with exposed I-beams and pipes and a massive rectangular steel box that filled the dusty space with a loud roar. The HVAC unit stood on a concrete pad that raised it some ten to twelve inches off the floor. Crouched beside it, a lean man with short curly hair and wire- framed glasses was working a pry bar beneath one edge of the heavy sheet metal that formed the unit’s locked hatch. In honor of Halloween, he was dressed in a black wetsuit. A small fluorescent-yellow SCUBA tank known as a pony bottle rested on the edge of the concrete pad beside him.
When the heavy door slammed shut behind her, the man-Walker?-swung around, the pry bar still gripped in his fist. “Who the hell are-”
She kicked the pry bar out of his hand, the iron rod spinning across the room to hit an exposed pipe with a clatter.
Walker might be small and wiry, but a lifetime of racquetball and sailing had made him lithe and strong. Surging up, he snatched the metal pony bottle from the concrete plinth and swung it at her head.
She ducked, but the momentum of his swing carried Walker on around. Before he could catch his balance, he smacked the pony bottle into one of the exposed I-beams. The impact sheared off the bottle’s valve and knocked the container from his hands. It hit the concrete pad under the HVAC unit with a sudden release of deadly contaminated air that sounded like an explosion.
With a whoosh, the bottle took off like a rocket, a missile driven by six cubic feet of weaponized DP3 under 3,000 pounds of pressure. It clattered against a pipe, ricocheted off another I-beam. Walker hit the floor, his arms coming up to protect his head. Tobie dove behind the HVAC and dug frantically in her shoulder bag for the Beretta.
The empty pony bottle whacked against the far wall with a hollow clang and tumbled to the floor beside the pry bar. Walker scrambled toward it, fingers groping toward the iron rod. Tobie’s fist closed around the pistol’s barrel. Yanking the gun from her bag, she slammed the handle into Walker’s temple.
He went down and stayed down.
She was breathing hard, hideously conscious that with every breath she drew a noxious cloud of death into her lungs. A thump jerked her gaze to the door. The handle was turning.
“Shit.” Stumbling over Walker’s prostrate body, she leaped for the door and threw her weight against it.
From the far side of the panel came Jax’s shout, “October?”
“Don’t come in here!” she screamed, sliding down to her haunches with her back pressed against the door. Half sobbing, she dug her cell phone out of her pocket and punched in 911 with shaking fingers.
“Hello? This is Ensign October Guinness. I have an emergency situation involving a biological hazard at the Miami Intercontinental.”
75
Jax stared through the wavy plastic barrier at the young woman in a hospital gown on the inside of the isolation bubble.
“How is she?” he asked.
Beside him, the young Latino doctor in green scrubs glanced down at his chart. “She’s doing great. It’s basically like a bad cold. But she’ll need to stay in there until they’re sure she’s no longer contagious.”
“Can I talk to her?”
The doctor tapped the microphone beside him. “Through the intercom system.”
Jax cleared his throat. “Hey, October. You look like shit.”
“Thank you.” She blew her nose. “They haven’t told me anything. What’s going on?”
“You did it, Tobie; you stopped Walker before he’d managed to break the seal on the HVAC system. They’re monitoring everyone who was in the hotel, just to be safe, but so far the only two people showing any signs of exposure to the pathogen are you and Walker. Not that anyone knows what really happened. The official line is they’re worried about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease.”
“So how’s Walker?”
“Not good, actually. The arrogant SOB obviously never thought to check his own DNA. They’ve had him on life support for the past twelve hours, but they’re about ready to pull the plug. How’s that for poetic justice?”
She sniffed. “What about Boyd?”
“Well, according to the press, the General died a hero, saving a young Naval ensign from an unknown assailant. That’s you, by the way. The ensign, I mean-not the assailant.”
She stared at him with wide, red-rimmed eyes. “That’s not poetic justice.”
“No. That’s the government covering its ass.”
“And the guy in the elevator?”
“Boyd’s aide, Captain Syd Phillips. He’s downstairs in the ICU, too, but he’s expected to make it. Says he thought the entire operation was a legitimate, authorized black op.”
“You believe him?”
“Actually, yes. That’s one of the problems with black ops. They’re all dirty, and they’re all secret. So how was he supposed to know this one wasn’t actually authorized?”
