operator spoke into his headset. “Frank! We got a virus connection here. Send in Doc Smith!”
Fifty meters outside the house, Leopole turned to CPS. “Doctor, you’re wanted inside. Evidently there’s some information about the virus.”
As the immunologist trotted toward the building, Leopole alerted the entry team. “CPS is inbound. Copy?”
“Copy that,” Breezy replied.
Moments later Carolyn Padgett-Smith stepped inside. She made her way around the corpses and the bound prisoners being searched. Breezy motioned to her. “Over here, Doc. This guy knows you!”
“What?”
Sharif looked up at the figure approaching him. Despite the full biohazard suit, he saw that the features were feminine.
He held his left shoulder with his right hand, propping himself on his left elbow. Apparently he was in pain. She knelt beside him.
The veterinarian inhaled deeply, savoring the moment. He lowered his voice, knowing she would have to come closer. “Dr. Padgett-Smith?”
She was on both knees, leaning toward him. He saw the large, violet eyes that had caught his attention on the website.
“Yes. I am Carolyn Padgett-Smith. Who are you, and how do you know about the Marburg?”
The wounded man gave her a crooked smile. She wondered why he looked at her that way. She began to turn toward Breezy, standing behind her.
“My name is Saeed Sharif. But I am known to you as Dr. Ali.”
Before she could react, the man raised himself more, reached behind him with his right arm, and brought it forward.
Carolyn Padgett-Smith felt a sudden, sharp pain below her left hip. Startled and confused, she looked down. She saw a 3cc syringe protruding from her suit and realized what had happened. Then she looked closer. It was a large-gauge needle and the plunger was three quarters of the way down.
Without thinking, she drew the Hi-Power from its holster and pushed the muzzle beneath the man’s right eye. She pulled the trigger three times, then dropped the pistol.
She looked up at Brezyinski, who was astounded at the previous few seconds. His MP-5 was still at low ready. Her voice was a whisper. “My god, he just killed me.”
Carefully, Padgett-Smith withdrew the syringe from her hip. The resistance told her what she already knew: her muscle had absorbed the contents, creating suction that resisted withdrawal.
CPS called over her shoulder. “Jeffrey! With me!”
Holding the syringe level with her left hand, she levered herself off the floor with her right and slowly walked to the rear of the house. Malten followed, uncertain what the doctor wanted him to do.
“Close the door,” she said. As he did so, she laid the syringe on a wood table. Then she said, “Help me off with this.”
Malten set down his weapon and stepped to her. He noticed that her hands trembled as she rotated the bubble helmet. He said, “I’ll get it, ma’am.” He wanted to call her Carolyn but thought better of it.
With the helmet off, she pulled the tape from her left wrist and Malten removed the right. She pulled off the outer gloves, then turned around. He tugged the orange suit off her shoulders and freed her arms. “All the way down,” she said.
Malten undid the tape around the ankles and pulled off the lower half of the suit. Down to her scrubs, she quarter-turned again and untied the pants, pushing them to her knees. With her left side to him, she covered herself with her right hand and pulled up the scrub top with her left. “What’s it look like?”
Jeffrey Malten realized that CPS had probably chosen him because he was a medic, but he still had to force himself to concentrate. He knelt down, looking at the reddening skin where the needle had penetrated, three inches below the hip bone. “It’s intramuscular, Doctor. I don’t think it got a vein.”
She rubbed the spot; it still stung. “Small blessing,” she said. “If only I… I hadn’t…” Her voice cracked and she stifled a sob.
Feeling vastly helpless, Jeffrey Malten reached down and pulled up her scrub pants. He tied the strings for her and stood up. Her arms went around his neck and the tears came. That was bad enough. Then she began crying openly, without any effort to hold back.
The former SEAL hugged her close, feeling the hot tears run down her cheeks.
Leopole made the call to Black Team. “We have positive items for pickup. Start your approach now.”
In the lead Mi-17, Terry Keegan descended toward the designated LZ, marked by yellow smoke. He told Eddie Marsh to remain in the holding pattern: no sense risking both birds on the ground at once. There was little wind so he set the Hip down with the nose pointed north, port-side door facing the house about seventy meters away. With his Pakistani copilot staying on the controls, Keegan unstrapped in anticipation of a quick briefing.
Leopole scrambled aboard and picked up a headset behind the cockpit. He gave Keegan a thumbs-up. “We have three items and one priority passenger.”
Keegan’s eyes widened in the red light. “We got the doctor?”
“Well, yes and no. Let’s go discreet.”
Leopole pulled off his headset and exited the helo. Keegan double-checked with the warrant in the left seat, then joined the ops officer thirty yards from the Hip.
“What gives, Frank?”
Leopole leaned close. “We got Ali alright, but he’s dead. He stuck Padgett-Smith with a needle and she thinks it’s Marburg. She’s pretty shook.”
“Holy shit! How’d that happen?”
“I’ll tell you when we RTB. Main thing is, Terry, we have three prisoners and I’m sending Carolyn back with you. There’s nothing we can do for her because of the incubation period. But I want to get her out of here ASAP in case she shows symptoms sooner than expected. She said she wants to talk to a colleague in London as soon as possible — apparently a homeopathic researcher. In any case, we need to get her to London immediately.”
Keegan nodded. “Concur. I’ll make arrangements as soon as we offload at base.”
Breezy and three other operators emerged from the house, herding the captives. The men were bound and blindfolded, directed to the Hip and helped aboard. Two were wounded, requiring extra assistance. Finally Jeff Malten appeared with Padgett-Smith grasping one of his arms.
Feeling like an intruder, Leopole caught her attention. “Doctor, we’re going to get you to London just as soon as we can. But we need to know if you found any biohazard in there.”
She took a moment to focus on the American. In the Hip’s strobing light her face alternately flashed red and dark, red and dark. Leopole felt as if her eyes were sunk in deep sockets like trapped animals regarding a dangerous world from their dens. “I found two syringes, including the one that…” Her voice trailed off. She cleared her throat and added, “Both are in the transport box with Omar.”
Leopole patted her arm. “Okay, thanks… Carolyn.”
She walked past Leopole and boarded the helo. Keegan noticed that Malten had to fasten her seat belt for her.
As the twin Klimov turboshafts spooled up and the Hip got light on its wheels, Omar Mohammed sprinted to the LZ. He lurched to a halt and waved animatedly. “I wanted to say good-bye to her.”
Leopole regarded his Muslim colleague. “You can say good-bye back at base.”
Mohammed looked at the receding Hip. “Perhaps.” He turned to Leopole. “I wonder if I will ever see her again.”
31
