Encrypted (34 page)

“You are sure that you knocked out the satellite coverage for our entire area?” Ronnie asked.

The young man kept typing. “Even the Chinese.”

“Crap,” Ronnie said
,
hitting her palm against the bulkhead.

“That’s good
,
isn’t it?” Zach asked, wincing as fire shot along a broken rib.

Neither Quirk nor Ronnie looked in his direction. Instead
,
their eyes met over the monitors.
Their y
ears of working together
were
so very apparent. They’d clearly reached some mutual decision.

Ronnie frowned, but Quirk was all smiles.

“That can only mean one thing,” Quirk stated
,
and
then turned that flirtatious smile in Zach’s direction. “We’re going to need
you
to strip.”

Zach’s eyes shot
a look at
Ronnie. Her assistant was joking, right? From the sympathetic look on her face, Quirk wasn’t. Ronnie knelt beside Zach, placing her hand on his knee.

“If they are staying this clear, then they must have planted a tracking device on you.”

Damn it
!
Of course
,
Grant had planted something on him.
That’s
what Zach would have done if the roles had been reversed. Zach
would
have thought of it if his head
weren’t
threatening to split in two. He tugged his turtleneck up
,
but couldn’t quite get it over his head. It didn’t exactly help that Quirk was licking his lips.

“Turn around,” Ronnie instructed her assistant.

“But
—
”

Ronnie gave Quirk a look that could have
—
seriously
—
lifted paint off the wall. Zach had always imagined what Ronnie looked like when silence filled their phone conversation
s
. She didn’t disappoint. Too bad he was in hypovolemic shock.

Quirk huffed, grabbed a laptop
,
and turned to the pilot.

“You have other clothes for me, I assume?” Zach asked.

Ronnie looked
at
Quirk
,
who glanced over his shoulder
,
more than a little contrite. Ronnie cocked her head to the side,
ready to scold her assistant.

* * *

“What?” Quirk demanded. “I was already
3
percent over budget.” Ronnie tried to get a word
in
edgewise, but Quirk overrode her. “
You
are the one
who
said no more spending,
period
!”

Oh
,
try and just to squirm out of that one, little missy
. Quirk knew that Ronnie wanted to look all in-charge for her lover boy, but Quirk wasn’t taking the fall for this one.

“Quite the well-prepared jailbreak,” Mr. Hunk-o-
M
atic
said
, and
then grit
ted
his teeth in pain. Was it wrong that Quirk found him even more appetizing when his eyes squinted just so?

“It’s our first,” Ronnie said to Zach, seeming to accept
the
fact that Quirk had won their last little exchange until she turned to him. “Give Zach your pants.”

“No!” he protested in horror.

“Quirk!”

“I can’t,” he said
,
a bit sheepish. “I’m going
commando
,” he admitted.

Of all the days…

Seriously
,
what did Ronnie expect after giving him only three hours to plan, prepare, and execute the most kick-ass rescue in the history of mankind? Some small details may have slipped past.
Like underwear.

“Um,” Zach said with a frown. “Can’t I at least keep my own briefs?”

“No!” both Quirk and Ronnie answered. At least they were on the same page about some things.

Ronnie turned to
the
very confused
-
looking FBI agent. “The CIA has been experimenting with fiber-thin passive wire elements that can be activated from up to three miles away. We can’t take the risk with any item that they had access to while you were detained.”

“So if anyone is going
commando
…” Quirk commented. Of course
,
Ronnie gave him her finely
honed “if looks could kill I’d be serving life imprisonment” look. Quirk was about to preemptively respond when a pair of brown
camo
pants landed on his head.

Snatching them away from his face, Quirk turned to find the pilot in nothing but his nice
,
tight, form-fitting long johns.

“My, my
,
” Quirk
said,
smil
ing
. “This day is looking up.”

* * *

Amanda maxed out the additional bandwidth Jennifer had gotten to broaden her search. How her assistant scrounged
around for
access to the CIA’s
W
eb search monitoring software so quickly
,
Amanda didn’t know
—
and quite frankly
,
didn’t want to know. They could be convicted of espionage later. Because they certainly couldn’t ask for help from their CIA liaison
,
could they?

She glanced over
at
Devlin
,
who didn’t even bother
pretending to
work. If the CIA liaison wasn’t using the bandwidth
,
why shouldn’t they
borrow it
?

Rapidly
,
she sorted through the searches for “Black Death,” and “Bubonic plague.” The numbers were staggering.
In the hundreds of millions.
Really
,
those were not the ones
that
she needed. Those represented people infected or worried about infection. Those were definitely not the Hidden Hand.

No, she honed in on
keyword
searche
s,
such as
“spread of the plague,”
and
“real
-
time death count,” words that would be more consistent with an organization monitoring the spread of their weapon. She also looked up “survivor stories,” and “instances of resistance.” The Hidden Hand would be very interested in such information. And with the plague raging through
out
the country
,
those
who
did
not
have any form of natural immunity would be identified much faster than the regular Black Death cycle.

Jennifer nudged Amanda.

She looked up as her assistant indicated
t
he infirmary
around them
—
crammed with beds and patients.
In fact, there were s
o many that the newer victims were being set up in the cafeteria. In the end, Amanda had no doubt that every single one of the seventy-nine inhabitants of Plum Island would end up on an IV drip.

Amanda cocked an eyebrow to her assistant as Jennifer nodded toward the back of the room.
The one where the first patients had been admitted.

The beds were filled with scientists and guards. Exactly what one would suspect
,
given
that
this was Plum Island
,
after all. Wait. There
wasn’t
just
one
guard down here, but
all
of the guards. And they were the sickest. One was even on oxygen already. His bubonic plague had become pneumonic plague
—t
he most deadly of the plague strains.

“They infected the guards first.”

Jennifer nodded solemnly.

Getting the guards sick first certainly did not seem accidental.

“Special Bulletin” blared from the television just before Anderson Cooper came back on.

“The governors of New York, New Jersey
,
and Connecticut have agreed that
hospitals
within the
entire tristate area are now at maximum capacity
,
and all three states have adopted the ‘Antibiotic Home Delivery’ system.” Anderson pierced the camera with those eyes of his. “Please
,
listen.
Medical personnel
urge you to stay home if you are not infected yet
,
and to please place a red
‘
X
’
on your door if you are. Medics will begin delivering antibiotics within the hour. Please
do
not
panic. Help is on the way.”

But help
wasn’t
on the way. Not really. Even with the most sophisticated of intravenous antibiotics
combination
s
,
Jennifer was no better. And Amanda could feel her
own
lymph nodes swelling and her fingertips tingling as
the plague
clogged
her
capillaries.

And now
,
knowing that the guards had been incapacitated?
The Hidden Hand not only wished to eliminate any threat to finding a cure for the plague
—
they clearly were planning on taking over Plum Island at some point.

Jennifer slammed her laptop cover closed and motioned for the nurse to come over.

“What are you doing?” Amanda asked.

Her assistant’s only response was to slam Amanda’s laptop cover closed as well. When the nurse walked over, Jennifer tugged at her IV line.

“Don’t,” the nurse said. “You could yank it out.”

With the fierce look in Jennifer’s eye
s
, that was exactly what her assistant wanted to
happen. To get unhooked from the IV so they could go back upstairs and get to work
at
full throttle.

Amanda turned to the nurse. “Cap us off.”

“These medications are vital to your
—
”

“I’m lead on the bubonic plague,” Amanda explained. “Don’t make me contradict you.” She indicated the other patients. Amanda lowered her voice. “We’re just rearranging chairs on the
Titanic
.”

The nurse knew that “the treatments” were simply to make them more comfortable until…well…until the end. Finally
,
the nurse sighed
,
and began the process of untethering them.

Amanda grinned at Jennifer. They were getting back to work
,
all right.

CHAPTER 15

Nearby
,
somewhere over Mexico

10:19
a
.
m
.,
MST

Grant hated helicopters. They were noisy, dirty
,
and usually smelled like ass. And this charming piece of scrap metal the Mexican army called a helicopter? Let’s just say
that
in comparison
,
the bar last night had a Parisian bouquet.

But the ends would justify the means. They
had
better.

He had not spent a year of his life wearing cheap suits and pretending to care about law enforcement without an impeccable exit strategy. If he didn’t get back into his Armani
suit
soon
,
he feared
that
his skin would simply slough off.

Oh,
and
when he delivered the Robin Hood
h
acker to his superiors? And helped stop the single largest threat to national security since the Civil War? Um, yeah, he’d get his Armani
suit
back
,
and so much more.

“Well?” he demanded of the mustached pilot.
Grant would never understand
Latinos’ fascination with bushy facial hair.