When he pulled the handkerchief away, he was stunned to see that the crisp white linen was speckled with red dots. As he stared at the blood long and hard, a chilling realization hit him: this was no mere physical response to stress.
‘Randall? You there?’
He pressed the receiver to his ear. ‘Do nothing until that cave is cleared out. Understand?’
‘Let’s be sensible about this. Al-Zahrani’s been infected …’
Infected. The word lingered in Stokes’s mind as he stared at the handkerchief. Infected?
‘So maybe we can use that to our advantage.’
‘After all our preparation and planning, there is no way in hell that I’m going to rely on one catalyst. You heard what Frank told us: rapid transmission is critical. It’s the whole purpose for what we’ve done inside that cave. If Al-Zahrani is isolated, the whole thing fizzles out. There’ll be no back-pedalling now. We’ve come too far for that.’
‘Technically, we have no idea what the real effect might be,’ Crawford challenged indignantly. ‘Remember, none of Frank’s scientists knew how this thing would be used. We have no guarantees. These aren’t lab mice …’
‘Fine. We’re hunting with a shotgun instead of a sniper rifle,’ Stokes quipped. ‘So be it.’
Outside, the driver had just gotten out from the car and was making his way around to the passenger side. Stokes didn’t recognize the man’s face. ‘There’s no such thing as a perfect plan,’ Stokes said. ‘Now scrape your men together and open that tunnel. Anyone asks questions, you tell them you’ve got four more terrorists to pull out of that hole. That’s all anyone needs to know.’
As the female got out from the car, Stokes did a double take. Even from a distance she looked awfully familiar.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Crawford said, exasperated.
The connection went dead.
Growling in frustration, Stokes slammed the receiver back on its base. He glared at the handkerchief again before stuffing it back in his pocket.
When he directed his attention back outside, the couple were out of view. So he spun his chair to a flat screen monitor dedicated to the cathedral’s close circuit security cameras. To the left of the display he referenced a schematic of the first floor and used the mouse to double-click one of the embedded camera icons in the section representing the main lobby.
The camera’s live feed filled the monitor - a straight view that perfectly framed the couple. Stokes worked the zoom controls to get a close-up of the female. He froze the feed, dragged a virtual box over her face then double- clicked the frame to enlarge the image. His eyes went wide. ‘Can’t be,’ he muttered.
He went to his e-mail screen, pulled up the message he’d sent to the Boston assassin and opened its JPEG attachment.
A perfect match.
‘What in God’s name is
He slid open the desk drawer, pulled out his Glock and confirmed that the ammo clip was full. Clicking the safety off, he dropped it into his jacket pocket.
The computer let out a small chirp to alert that a new e-mail message had arrived.
‘Now what?’ he grumbled. When he saw who’d sent the message, his heart faltered. ‘It’s about time, Frank,’ he muttered. He opened the e-mail and read Roselli’s long-awaited message:
How ironic that I’d come to your office to kill you. But as always, you were a step ahead. Congratulations, Randall! If there is justice in this godforsaken world, you will no doubt confiscate my PDA, which holds the incriminating information about your mad conspiracy to exterminate innocent people in the name of God. If so, you may have noticed the thin residue coating its keyboard. See that rash on your hand? …
Pulse accelerating, Stokes turned over his hand and assessed the raw, inflamed skin on his palm.
Since you’re so obsessed by disease, it’s only fitting that you die from pestilence. That was a highly concentrated strain of anthrax you touched. Even more potent than the Ames Amerithrax we’d field tested in 2001. When absorbed through the skin it’s 100 per cent lethal, non-transmittable to others. Engineered for selective reduction, or covert assassination. If you touch your nose, eyes or mouth, its virulence will be intensified. Death comes swiftly, but not before two to three days of intense suffering as your respiratory system bleeds out and chokes you. Or maybe you’ll choose to hasten your demise by your own hand? Good riddance. See you in Hell.
Stokes’s shoulders slumped. He crumpled in his chair and turned to the window. On the other side of the glass, a black dove stared in at him.
56
IRAQ
‘That’s them,’ Jason said, lowering his binoculars. From the sky, the rogue pickup truck was easy to spot as it sped along an open ribbon of dusty roadway leading west over the expansive plain.
‘Where do you think they’re taking him? Kirkuk?’ Meat asked.
‘Probably. And we can’t let that happen.’
‘No problem.’
‘Without killing them,’ Jason clarified.
‘Well, who doesn’t like a challenge?’
‘If you get us low alongside them,’ Camel cut in over the intercom, ‘I can shoot out the tyres.’
‘Much appreciated,’ Jason said, scanning the terrain in infrared through his binoculars. ‘But I think I’ve got a better idea. Meat, the road crosses a bridge about three klicks out. Think you might be able to set us down on the west side, block them in?’
‘Hell yeah,’ Meat said. ‘We could just take out the bridge too.’
‘That would be a waste of taxpayer dollars,’ Jason said with a smile. ‘Let’s not be lazy, okay?’
‘I was just joking,’ Meat replied sheepishly.
‘And if the truck turns around?’ Jam asked.
‘If they turn around, they’ve got nowhere to go,’ Jason said. ‘We’ll just keep them moving until they run out of gas. Then we’ll get on the ground and surround them. It’s just the driver and Al-Zahrani. Al-Zahrani’s in no condition to run and the driver certainly won’t be able to carry him far without help.’
‘I still think we should just blow that truck to hell,’ Jam said.
‘That’s your retirement plan down there,’ Camel reminded him. ‘No body, no bounty.’
‘Fuck the money,’ Jam said. ‘That fucker needs to die.’
A pregnant pause indicated a quiet consensus.
The Blackhawk was closing the gap fast. Meat swept in over the roadway. The truck had less than a kilometre lead now.
‘What exactly is wrong with Al-Zahrani anyway, Google?’ Camel asked.
‘Not sure. The medic was running some tests when I left … was trying to figure out the problem. But whoever took Al-Zahrani from the tent killed the medic on the way out the door.’
‘I liked the doc,’ Meat said. ‘Good guy.’
The bridge was less than two kilometres away.
The truck accelerated.
‘He’s going for it,’ Meat said.
‘Pull ahead and drop down on the other side,’ Jason said.
Meat pushed forward on the cyclic and eased down on the collective. The Blackhawk swooped low over the truck on a direct path for the bridge.
Below the bridge, Jason suddenly noticed activity - Arab men scurrying out from under the trusses … with weapons. Jason screamed, ‘Pull up!’
Through his night-vision lenses, Meat saw an RPG tube aimed directly at him. ‘Oh fuck,’ he gasped. He pulled the cyclic hard to the left. At close range, the chopper was hopelessly caught in the gunner’s sight. In anticipation
