Joe Ledger (21 page)

As she talked I thought about what it must be like to be Ryerson. What specific bit of damage makes a man tear off tiny chunks of his life and feed them into a machine that everyone knows is specifically designed to give a debit on any long-term investment? Old ladies play the slots out of boredom and because they socialize with the other pensioners. The uninformed play them because the casino hype yells about the million dollar jackpots. Guys like Ryerson have to know that there’s no happy ending because even a jackpot on the nickel slots is small change, comparatively speaking. This man was either a loser or he was sick, and he almost certainly knew it.

The first digit pinged on the combination.

“So what changed?” I asked, knowing that there had to be a second act to this sad story.

“He bought a new car,” she said. “He cleared all his credit card debt. And he booked a vacation in Las Vegas.”

“I’m guessing that he didn’t win big at the slots.”

“His largest jackpot to date is forty-eight dollars and fifty cents. However over the last month, he’s made five cash deposits between twenty-five hundred and forty-five hundred dollars.”

“Ah,” I said. Banks are required to report deposits over a certain dollar amount. “Why doesn’t he just take out an ad in the paper saying he’s been bought?”

“He might as well have,” she agreed.

“Bug,” I said, “take a look at this guy Ryerson. See if he looks good as our informant. Hit me with anything that comes up.”

“Copy that.”

The second number pinged. Four to go.

“Why were you looking at him in the first place?” I asked Violin.

She shook her head. “We were looking at this facility. At everyone here. It’s been on our list for years because two of the shareholders have business ties to known members of the Red Order. Strong ties. One of those shareholders also owns points in BioDynamics out of South Africa.”

I nodded. I knew that from our own intel. Without the BioDynamics connection, our people might not have taken the nameless informant very seriously. But you can’t ignore that kind of red flag.

If you don’t remember the story, it was four years ago. BioDynamics made a name for itself by developing technologies that allowed groups like Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization to collect and process biological samples while still in the field. That was a godsend because it allowed the doctors to identify diseases and classify disease mutations without the time lag of sending samples to labs in Europe or America. Lives were saved every day because of that technology.

Here’s the kicker, though: the biosampling equipment was also collecting a great deal of information about virulent strains of exotic diseases and storing it in concealed clean compartments within the machine housing. When BioDynamics techs went into the field every few months to collect the machines and replace them with fresh units, all of those samples were taken back to the main lab in Modderfontein, in the Gauteng province of South Africa. There, the diseases samples were processed, studied, weaponized, mass-produced, and sold to groups who intended to distribute them in the poorest black towns throughout the country. The strains they tried to release were designed to resist all known antibiotics. The goal? Win back South Africa for a small ultraextremist group of whites by simply eradicating the majority of the blacks. Simple, direct, utterly ruthless, and very effective. Similar distribution plans were in the works for Somalia and other countries with a high percentage of black Muslims.

It would have been effective if not for a joint action taken by the DMS, Barrier—the UK counterpart of the DMS—and a hotshot Recces team from the South African Special Forces Brigade. The facility was seized, and the staff arrested and put on trial for a list of crimes that was so long that the world court judges asked the prosecution to summarize. The courts had to make an example of the perpetrators because to not do so would be to ignite the fuse on a global race war.

 It didn’t surprise me that Red Order members were involved. They pretty much invented the concept of hate crimes back in the thirteenth century. Freaks.

The third and fourth digits pinged at the same time.

I went through my habitual self pat-down, quickly and lightly touching the handle of the Beretta 92F snugged into a nylon shoulder rig, the rapid-release folding knife clipped to the inside of one pocket, the BAMS unit hanging from my belt.

The fifth light pinged.

I glanced at Violin as I pulled my hazmat hood into place.

“You’re underdressed for this party.”

“I hope not.”

“Hey, I’m serious, Violin,” I said. “Maybe you don’t know what I’m hunting down here.”

“Protocols for developing a weaponized viral hemorrhagic fever. Arklight has been aware for some time of plans to sell a developed protocol along with viable samples of a crude prototype to several terrorist groups, including the Knights.”

I stared at her. “You think you’re down here to steal some computer files?”

“Sure.”

“You do realize that MindReader is currently hacked into that system and whatever they have, we now have.”

“You have MindReader, Joseph,” she said, “but Arklight doesn’t. And the Oracle system Mr. Church gave us is a poor substitute.”

“Horse shit. Oracle is the second-best hacking system in the world. Besides, if you’d have brought this to us, Church would have Bug on this.”

Violin’s eyes shifted away, and I suddenly knew why she hadn’t reached out.

“Your mother didn’t want to ask Church for a favor,” I said.

“No,” she said, and sighed.

There is apparently a very long and complicated history between Mr. Church and Lilith. It is, however, a tightly closed subject. Also…given her history, I would imagine that it would gall Lilith to ask for help from any man. I did not blame her one bit.

On the other hand, that lack of communication came with its own problems.

“Listen to me,” I said, taking her by the arms, “I didn’t come down here to hack a file any more than I’m here to intercept a sample. We have an informant who said that this thing is already fully developed and that they are mass-producing it for an established client.”

That news hit her pretty damn hard. The way you’d expect it to hit someone. Her eyes flared and she recoiled from the hatch as if it was a coiled rattlesnake.

“Are you
sure
?”

“Sure? No. We have an anonymous voice on the phone. The call was made from a disposable phone that was purchased at a strip mall near here.”

She considered this, then shook her head. “All of our intel indicates that they are months away from a stable bioweapon. Besides, this is a development facility, Joseph. The viruses will be in sealed containers in secured vaults. It’s not going to be floating around.”

“Under ideal circumstances, sure, but what if they realize that they’re being infiltrated? Accidents happen. Believe me, I know. I’ve seen a lot of monsters, big and small, get off the leash.”

Violin chewed her lip. It was an unconscious action with no hint of flirtation in it, but I still found it incredibly sexy.

Yes, even crouching in an airshaft over a lab that made weaponized Ebola, I’m still a horn dog. Not a news flash.

The last number pinged.

“You can’t go in,” I said.

“There’s no way I’m staying out here.”

“I can bring Top and Bunny down here and you can stay topside and watch our backs.”

“Not a chance, Joseph.”

“It’s fucking dangerous in there, Violin.”

“Well,” she said with a coquettish smile, “then I’ll have to be very careful, won’t I?”

I didn’t answer that. But I pulled the hood on and made sure the seals were perfectly tight. I don’t mind taking risks—that’s kind of a professional responsibility, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve taken some really dumb risks over the years in situations where I didn’t have the time to think up a better plan. But give me a few minutes to plan and I’m the most cautious guy you’d ever want to meet. There are no second chances when it comes to accidents involving one of the world’s deadliest pathogens.

Violin and I drew our guns. We shared a nod, then I lifted the hatch.

Chap. 4

Bug fed us the route.

Down a metal ladder, along one corridor, through a doorway, down some stairs, through more doorways and more corridors. At each point we encountered a security barrier—a retina scan, geometric hand scanner, keycard box. MindReader was deep inside the system now, though, and as we approached each doorway the scanner lights went from red to green. Nothing and no one stopped us. Not surprising, since the first three levels were administrative. Funny that even evil and corruption generate a lot of mundane paperwork.

I tried to imagine who would come to a place like this to fix the copier.

Did they have evil copier companies?

Then we reached the bottom level and stood inside the stairwell, stealing covert glances through a small wire-mesh window in the door. Twenty feet away was a heavy-gauge steel door, and outside stood a guard. Big, tough-looking, and alert. He had a Sig Sauer in a belt holster and a Heckler and Koch rifle slung from one muscular shoulder.

Bug said, “Okay, Cowboy, we have sixteen rooms at that level. Employee records indicate a security staff and lab personnel working on all shifts. You’re too deep for thermal scans, but figure anywhere from nine to fourteen people.”

“We see one guard,” I said. “How many others?”

“Four on the schedule. You want me to send backup?”

I cut a look at Violin. She was a superbly trained assassin. A world-class sniper and one of the deadliest knife fighters I’d ever met. Faster than me, and I’m really fast.

“We got it,” I said, “but don’t let anyone upstairs fall asleep.”

I nodded to the door. “You as good with a pistol as you are with a sniper rifle?”

Violin cocked an eyebrow. I told her why.

Chap. 5

As soon as I opened the door the guard whipped around in my direction and brought his rifle up. What he saw was a man in a black hazmat suit.

Specifically, he saw a man in a hazmat suit who took a single wobbly step before collapsing as if dying.

The soldier stared in horror for half a second, caught between needing to know who I was and yelling for help.

Violin leaned out the door and put two bullets in him. One in the heart, one in the head.

Perfect shots, nearly silent, the
pfft
sounds following each other so quickly they almost sounded like a single report. The guard went down. Without a sound, without a pause. One moment he was alive, and the next he was meat slumping to the ground.

There is a part of me that is constantly appalled at the fragility of life and the grim candor with which an invitation to die is spoken to total strangers. I did not know this man, and it was likely that I’d never know his name or anything about him. Somebody else in another enforcement agency would handle clean up on him. Another person I didn’t know would sweep this man’s life into the trash can.

As I got up I glanced at Violin. There was no flicker of mercy or regret or anything on her face. I had the tiniest flicker of distaste at that before I reminded myself of where she’d been born and under what circumstances she’d been raised. In light of that, it was amazing that she was not, herself, a monster.

I checked the BAMS unit. The lights were still green.

I tapped my earbud. “We’re at the door, Bug. Let us in.”

The security locks clicked.

I took the lead as I nudged the door open with my shoulder. Directly inside was a small room with rows of hazmat suits on hangars, a sign-in log, and a pressurized door. We had to let the hall door close and seal before the inner door would open. The air had that distinctive smell of ultrafiltered air, which never smelled quite right to me. I guess I’ve become habituated to pollutants.

Still had green lights on the BAMS.

We went through the pressurized door and found ourselves in a kind of central courtyard that had three short corridors leading to big doors marked—I kid you not—One, Two, and Three.

Violin turned to me. “Do you know which lab has the Ebola?”

“Nope. Want to see what’s behind door number one?”

She nodded without a smile. I doubted she watched many game shows. I let it go.

We crept toward that corridor, flanked the entrance, and were just about to make the short run to the door when it opened.

A small man in a white lab coat stood there.

He should have been shocked. He should have shrieked and yelled and called for backup.

Instead he smiled.

A small, cold smile.

The four security guards behind him all had guns; all of them had laser sights on me.

“So,” said the small man in the lab coat, “this is fun, isn’t it?”

I recognized his voice.

It was my informant.

I said, “Ah, balls.”

Chap. 6

“Drop your guns,” said the little man.

“Not a chance,” I said, pointing the barrel at his face. He was almost close enough to grab and use as a shield; definitely close enough to kill with my first shot.

The guy seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Shoot me and my guys will kill you.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “maybe. But you’ll be deader’n shit.”

“True.” He contrived not to look impressed. I wondered why. “So where’s that leave us?”

“Having a chat.”

“What would you like to chat about?”

“It starts with an ‘e.’”

He chuckled. It made his eyes crinkle, and I realized that he looked exactly like Mr. Rogers. Swap the lab coat for a cardigan and it’s him. It gave this whole thing an extra layer of surreal weirdness.

“Can we pause to appreciate the wonderfulness of my trap?” he asked.

“Yes, hooray, I’m sure you’ll get your Mad Scientist merit badge.”

He pursed his lips. “Sadly you won’t get the Be Prepared badge. You came in here alone?”

“He’s not alone,” said Violin. “He brought a date.”

We all laughed about that. The laser sights never budged, though. Not theirs, not ours.