symptoms was alarming. Since the onset of Operation Genesis, Stokes had been forthright about the wide reach of a custom virus that would target Arab males. ‘It won’t be only the terrorists who fall. Know that the innocent fathers of our future enemies, too, will be sacrificed along the way,’ Stokes had told him. ‘If we have any survivors in there,’ Crawford briefed the Kurd, ‘I’ll need you to talk some sense into them. Tell them to be smart and surrender. Can I count on you to do this?’
‘Jesus, Colonel,’ Shuster said defiantly. ‘Clearly he’s in no condition to—’
Crawford’s chest puffed out like a rooster. He stepped up to Shuster and put his face so close, the two men touched noses. ‘Corporal, you are way out of line.’
‘Please,’ Hazo said, putting an appeasing hand on Shuster’s arm. ‘I will help you.’
‘I hope you’re right about all this, Colonel,’ Shuster warned.
Thick veins webbed out over Crawford’s red face.
Shuster unstrapped the M9 pistol from his side holster and proffered it to Hazo. ‘If you’re going in there, take this.’
Hazo nodded and accepted the gun, though no matter what might happen, he vowed not to go against his beliefs.
Shuster gave Hazo a quick tutorial on how to flip off the safety and fire the weapon. ‘And stay behind us,’ he added.
‘I will,’ Hazo said, clumsily holding the gun away from his body.
Shuster climbed up and disappeared through the hole.
‘Good luck,’ Crawford said to Hazo.
Hazo offered no reply and began his climb towards the hole.
63
LAS VEGAS
The instant Stokes attempted to close the vault’s door, Flaherty snatched the clay map from Brooke and bolted after him. He was only four steps away when the door stopped short from seating against the doorframe. On the other side of the door, Stokes tried pulling harder on the handle, yet the door didn’t budge. It took mere seconds for Stokes to detect the problem: the dead-bolt was slightly engaged so that the thick slide bolt protruded just enough to keep the door from seating. While no one had been watching, Flaherty had tampered with the deadbolt just before he’d come into the vault.
Immediately, the door swung inward.
But Flaherty was already in a wide pitcher’s stance with the clay tablet cocked back above his right shoulder.
On the other side of the door, Stokes was raising his gun to prepare for a cautious re-entry. His eyes, however, went to the room’s centre - not directly in front of him.
Flaherty’s faster reaction time won out. He launched the five-pound tablet at Stokes’s head.
The tablet whirred through the air on a direct line for the pastor’s face. Stokes nimbly bobbed sideways so that the tablet instead skimmed his right ear. In the process, he managed to fire one misaligned shot that sailed past Flaherty and thwacked into the thick security glass on the front side of the display case containing Lilith’s head.
Before Stokes regained his footing, Flaherty charged forward like a linebacker and buried his right shoulder in the preacher’s abdomen. The tackle lifted Stokes, brought him crashing down on to the floor with his chest catching the brunt of the impact.
There was a loud pop and Flaherty felt something under him give way. He was shocked to see a glossy wingtip sticking up over his shoulder. Flaherty realized it was the business end of the pastor’s prosthetic limb - tangled under his arm.
Stokes was quick to respond and the gun came arcing towards Flaherty’s face.
With both hands, Flaherty grabbed at Stokes’s wrist and forced the Glock sideways. A second shot rang out and punched through the wall.
Getting into a wrestling match with Stokes was a losing proposition, Flaherty was certain. But Stokes had two things working against him: a missing leg and Anthrax-tainted lungs. With the struggle escalating, Flaherty could hear bubbling sounds coming from Stokes’s chest.
Stokes responded with a head butt that caught Flaherty on the bridge of the nose and made him see stars.
‘Aaaghh!’ Flaherty screamed out. He managed to hold on to the gun. At the same time, he buried his shoulder in Stokes’s face.
Choking, Stokes struggled to push Flaherty away.
Then Stokes let out a muffled scream and Flaherty felt the gun pinned hard against the floor. He glimpsed a chunky black clog grinding down on the gun.
‘Let it go, Stokes!’ Brooke yelled. She pulled her foot up again and stomped down a second time. Finally the gun fell free from his mashed fingers. A swift kick sent it skittering across the carpet.
Desperate for oxygen, Stokes flailed and bucked, trying to use his liberated stump for leverage.
Like riding a bronco, Flaherty couldn’t control the crazed pastor. To regain his balance, he had to relinquish his grip on Stokes’s wrist. That meant he had no choice but to pull his shoulder off Stokes’s mouth.
The pastor coughed fiercely, spraying blood on Flaherty’s neck.
Another forceful buck sent Flaherty tumbling on to the floor.
Stokes rolled on to his elbows and retched blood and bile on to the carpet.
It was the opportunity Brooke had been waiting for. In her hand, she clutched the nearest solid object she could find - the clay tablet. With all her might, she swung the map of Eden down at Stokes’s head. It connected. The pastor collapsed on to the floor.
64
IRAQ
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jason gasped, standing at the top of the stairs. He had to cover his mouth and nose with his sleeve to fight off a fetid stench.
In the room to the right, he caught a quick glimpse of the two men he’d struck blindly from downstairs. In opposite corners of the room, each body lay face down and twisted on the splintered floorboards.
‘In here, Google,’ Meat called again.
Jason lowered his AK-47, stepped over the dead guy Meat had gunned down on the landing, and went into the second room. The horrid smell sharpened, and its source was immediately apparent.
Sprawled atop a mattress that was the room’s only furnishing, Fahim Al-Zahrani lay in a gory mire of blood, vomit and tissue. Since much of the stringy red slime still draped from the corpse’s blue lips, Jason assumed it to be a puree of Al-Zahrani’s innards. Blood streamed like tears from the corpse’s lifeless eyes - the orbs solid red. And the entire mattress beneath his lower half was completely saturated in red, suggesting that blood and liquefied organs had found their way out every possible exit.
‘Man,’ Meat said from the far corner, ‘what the hell’s going on here?’
An elderly Arab - unarmed - sat on the floor beside Meat, legs tucked to his chest, rocking back and forth. He was chanting prayers in Arabic. Every few seconds, a spate of coughing interrupted the recitation. The old guy displayed the same pallid complexion Jason had noticed in the man whom Meat stabbed in the throat.
‘I mean, what did these guys do to him?’ Meat said.
‘They didn’t do this, Meat. They
‘Then who did?’
As if on cue, Jason’s sat-com vibrated. He dug in his pocket to find it, saw that it was Flaherty.
‘Tommy?’
‘Yeah, it’s me.’
‘Everything all right in Vegas?’
‘No. Not by a longshot, I’m afraid.’
Jason listened as Flaherty rehashed the candid tell-all discussion he and Brooke had had with Pastor Randall Stokes - the discovery of an ancient contagion that USAMRIID scientists under Frank Roselli’s guidance had
