Patient Zero_ A Joe Ledger Novel Part 23

"Just the one guard?" Skip said, eager to correct his mistake. "Four shifts a week?"

"One we've seen," Church corrected, pleased with the observation. He leaned over and slid the box of cereal bars toward the young sailor. Skip hesitated and then took a granola one and looked at it for a full five seconds without opening it. I wondered if he was going to have it framed.

"The grounds are not patrolled during the day," I said. "When Walford goes home he locks the gate from the outside. Except for Walford; no one else has come or gone."

"If I say 'that's weird' I won't get a cookie, will I?" Bunny said, and Church kind of smiled. Bunny reached out and took a chocolate cereal bar with a "Mother, May I?" expression on his face. He tore it open and popped it in his mouth.

There was a burst of squelch and the pilot's voice said, "ETA forty minutes."

"Okay, guys a.s.sessment," I said, and everyone's face sharpened.

Skip said, "Nine vehicles so we got nine potential hostiles."

"Truck had two," Ollie said looking at his notes, "so make it ten."

"No," Top said, rustling his copy of the intel report, "look at page four. Trucks are registered to the company. Probably parked there on a regular basis, which means that the two guys who drove it there likely commuted in by car. We have six cars in the lot." He looked up. "Thermal scans?"

"Place packs seafood," Church said. "They got ice machines and refrigeration. Thermal signals are weak. We've picked up a max of four weak human signals at one time. Distortion is too bad to permit any useful guesses as to how many people are in there."

"Whoa, whoa," Bunny said, "if this place has been shut down since the beginning of the year why the h.e.l.l they running ice machines and fridges?"

I beamed at him. "That's a d.a.m.n good question, isn't it?"

Church considered him for a moment, then pushed the package of cereal bars all the way over to Bunny. Skip looked crushed.

"s.h.i.t," Top muttered. "So we got no idea what the h.e.l.l we're stepping into. Could be twenty people in there. Could be twenty of those dead-a.s.s zombies in there, too."

"We have to be open to any possibility," I agreed.

Church nodded. "We know this: as of the Presidential Order in my jacket pocket that crab plant is now designated enemy soil. Rules of war apply, the Const.i.tution is suspended. Hostiles are designated as enemy combatants."

"Sucks to be them," Bunny said, munching a cookie.

Chapter Fifty-Eight.

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 2:33 A.M.

WE TOUCHED DOWN behind a volunteer fire station a mile from the plant. A second chopper stood nearby and the lot was crammed with all manner of official vehicles, most of them painted to look nondescript. But I've seen enough of them to tell.

We piled out and hurried in through the station's back door. Gus Dietrich was already there, standing by two wheeled racks of equipment. Each member of the team was issued a communicator that looked like a streamlined Bluetooth. By tapping the earpiece we could change channels. Channel one was secured for team communication, which would be monitored by Church and his command group in a van that was parked a half-mile away from the plant. Other channels were for full-team operations, should it become necessary to bring in the special ops, SWAT, and other specialists on standby. One channel was reserved as my private line to Church.

The Saratoga Hammer Suits had arrived and we all tried them on. They fit like loose coveralls and were surprisingly comfortable and mobile. I did some kicks and punches in the air while wearing my suit, and even with the Kevlar vest and other limb padding it didn't slow me down much at all. Bunny's was a bit tighter and he looked like a stuffed sausage.

We had our choice of weapons. I still didn't have a sound suppressor for my.45, so I kept the Beretta M9, and anyway it was lighter and already loaded with nine-millimeter Parabellum hollow-points. When I looked up I saw Rudy watching me, his eyes showing doubt and concern.

"Si vis pacem, para bellum," I quoted as I holstered the gun.

He squinted as he worked out the translation, " 'If you seek peace, prepare for war.' "

"Hooah," Top murmured from a few feet away.

"That the trademark of the gun manufacturer?" Rudy asked.

"No," I said as I checked the magazine and slapped it back into place. "The ammunition is nine-millimeter Parabellum. The name comes from a quote by the Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus."

"At least formal education wasn't wasted on you," Rudy said. He cleared his throat. "Good luck to all of you. Come back safely." He backed away and sat on the rear b.u.mper of one of the fire trucks, hands in his lap, fingers knotted together in a nervous tangle. He was sweating but I doubt it had anything to do with the heat of this humid July night.

I gave him a wink as I put extra magazines in a Velcro pouch around my waist. Each of my four guys had MP5s fitted with quick-release sound suppressors. I strapped a st.u.r.dy fighting knife to my calf-the Ranger combat knife, which is ten and three-quarter inches from pommel to the tip of its black stainless steel blade and is nicely balanced for close fighting or throwing.

Grace Courtland's chopper landed while my men were checking each other's equipment; she led Alpha Team in and they immediately began sorting out their Hammer suits. She walked over to me.

"Enjoying your first day with the DMS?" she said with a wicked grin.

"Yeah. I find it very relaxing."

"Well, maybe tomorrow we can go find some bombs to defuse."

"It'd make a nice change."

She grinned at me, but I could see ghosts behind her smiling eyes. St. Michael's was still as current for her as Delaware and Room 12 were for me. The "mark" was there in her eyes and I knew she could see it in mine. I found the mutual recognition weirdly comforting.

"How's your team?" she asked.

"Ready to do their jobs. Yours?"

"My team will be on deck throughout. You say the word and we'll come running." She paused. "I wish I was going in with you."

"Thanks," I said. "When this is over I would like to get drunk. Care to join me?"

She studied my face for a moment. "That sounds lovely. I'll buy the first round." She offered me her hand. "You're a good man, Joe. Church thought so all along, and he's seldom wrong. Sorry it took so long for me to catch up."

I took her hand. "Water under the bridge."

"Don't get killed," she said, trying to make a joke of it, but her eyes were a little gla.s.sy. She turned quickly away and headed over to where her team was loading their gear into the back of a fire truck.

I looked around and saw Church about fifty yards away just closing his cell phone. I signaled to him and went over. "Before we roll I want to set a few things in motion," I said. "I want you to start building me a top-of-the-line forensics team. No second-stringers and n.o.body I don't know personally."

"Who do you have in mind?"

I pulled a sheet of paper out of my pocket. "This is a list of forensics people I know and trust. Most of all I want Jerry Spencer from D.C. I believe you already know him."

"We offered to bring him on board, but he declined."

"Make a better offer. Jerry is the best crime-scene man I ever met."

"Very well." Church touched my arm. "We have no leads at all on who the spy might be, Captain. That means it could be anyone." He was looking past me to where Echo and Alpha Teams were gearing up. "Watch your back."

He offered his hand, and I took it.

I turned away and yelled out loud. "Echo Team-let's roll!"

Chapter Fifty-Nine.

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 2:51 A.M.

THE FOURTH OF July was still three days away but there were already fireworks. Not a pretty starfield or fiery chrysanthemums in the night sky-this was a single bloom of intense orange-red that soared upward from the edge of a weather-worn set of wooden steps that led from the choppy waters of the Tangier Sound to the creosote planking of the dock at the Blue Point Crab and Seafood processing plant in Crisfield. The impact followed the roar of heavy marine engines as a blue cigarette boat fishtailed through the black water while an apparently drunk pilot struggled sloppily for control. The boat hit the dock at full throttle and exploded, the full fuel tanks rupturing from the impact and igniting from the laboring engine. There was a deep-throated roar like an angry dragon and flames shot upward to paint the entire sound in shades of Halloween orange and fireplace red.

It was too early in the morning for witnesses, but there dozens of people sleeping aboard their anch.o.r.ed boats and within a few minutes each of them was on a cell phone or ship-to-sh.o.r.e radio. Almost immediately the air was rent with the piercing screams of fire engines and ambulances tearing along the country roads.

Simon Walford was on duty in his guard shack reading a David Morrell novel by lamplight and sipping coffee when the boat hit the dock. He spilled half a cup down the front of his uniform shirt and was sputtering in shock as he keyed the radio handset to try and call the incident in to his supervisor, who did not answer the call. It had been two days since Walford had spoken to anyone in the plant, and two weeks since he had seen a single living soul. The cars were all still in the lot, though. It didn't make sense. He grabbed his walkie-talkie, ran out of his booth, and raced across the parking lot to the dock, but as soon as he saw the flames he knew there would be no hope of finding survivors. The heat from the blaze kept him well back. All he got was a glimpse of a blackened form hunched forward in the pilot's seat, his body wreathed in flames, his limbs as stiff and unmoving as a mannequin.

"Good G.o.d!" Walford breathed. He called it into 911, but even before the call went through he could hear sirens in the distance. Had he been a little less shocked by what had happened he might have been surprised at how incredibly fast the local volunteer fire department had been able to respond to the crisis, especially at that time of night. As it was, all he could think of was how helpless he felt. He tried his supervisor's number again, but still got the answering machine, so he left an urgent and almost incoherent message. Shocked and impotent, he trudged back to his station and unlocked the fence to allow the fire trucks to enter.

Chapter Sixty.

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 2:54 A.M.

WE WATCHED THE boat explosion on Dietrich's laptop.

"Sweet," Skip murmured. We were parked on the side of the road three quarters of a mile from the plant, lights off.

"Christ," complained Bunny, "I'm boiling in this s.h.i.t."

"Life's hard, ain't it?" said Top, who was sweating as much as the rest of us but didn't seem to care. I'm pretty sure that if Top Sims had an arrow stuck in his kidney he wouldn't let the pain show on his face. Some guys are like that.

"Okay," yelled Gus Dietrich, "the 911 call just went through."

"Light 'er up," I told him, and the driver fired up the engine and punched on the lights and sirens.

So far our hastily formed plan was going well. One of Church's staff engineers had rigged a remote piloting unit to the cigarette boat that had been confiscated when the task force took the warehouse, and they'd gotten two store mannequins from G.o.d only knows where and strapped them into the front seats. Dietrich worked the remote controls and made quite a show by zigzagging the boat through the anch.o.r.ed pleasure craft and generally causing a ruckus. If there were any witnesses they would report a drunk driving like a lunatic. The cigarette was loaded to the gunnels with gas cans and small C4 charges which Dietrich radio-detonated as soon as the boat struck the dock. It was way too big an explosion, more like something you see in movies, and it was d.a.m.ned impressive.

Within minutes we were being frantically waved through the open gates by the security guard. Our driver angled left and headed toward the big red-painted emergency standpipe and as we squealed to a halt everyone piled out. The second engine pulled closer to the dock and we had calls in for three more engines to join us. That would put a lot of men and women in identical coats and helmets running around. A few of them would even be actual firefighters. Police cars seemed to appear by the dozen-state and local. I knew that Grace was in one of them, and Alpha Team was peppered throughout the rest. Church was in a command van parked around the bend in the access road, and the special ops teams were in vans behind him. Close, but would they be close enough if we encountered heavy resistance?

As we piled out, Bunny and Top went directly to the standpipe, pa.s.sing the line of parked cars and trucks that had been spotted by the spy satellite and helo surveillance. Skip and Ollie pulled a hose off the truck and began unlimbering it as they walked backward toward the pipe.

"Camera on my two o'clock," I heard Bunny say in my earpiece. "Slow rotation on a ninety-degree swing."

"Copy that. I'm coming in. Give me some cover." They took their cue and began fitting a hose nozzle to the pipe. I closed on the group, watching the camera out of the corner of my eye. As soon as it swung toward the main part of the lot where all the activity was in full swing I dashed forward and flattened against the wall in what I judged to be the dead spot beneath the box-style camera. When I ran to the wall a firefighter moved from a point of concealment behind the door of the engine and hurried quickly over to take my place. We repeated this process four more times and then Echo Team was all scrunched up against the wall and real firefighters were attaching the hose to the pipe.

"Skip eyes on the camera," I said. Bunny removed a sensor from his pocket and ran it over every square inch of the door and then showed me the readout.

"Standard alarm contact switch," he said. "It'll go off when we open the door."

"Perfect. Ollie, go to work." Ollie had volunteered to tackle the lock, which was a heavy industrial affair. He had to earn his pay, but in less than two minutes he had it unlocked. He kept the door closed, though, because the alarm would ring the second we opened it. If there was no one directly inside then our carnival act was going to pay off, but if even one person was inside then we were screwed as far as stealth went.

"Okay," I said into the mike, "call the cops."

The signal was relayed and a big-shouldered state trooper came loping over. I motioned to him to slow his walk so that the panning camera clearly caught him moving toward the door, and then as soon as it panned away I waved him in and he ran the last few yards. I turned and pounded my fist hard on the door for three seconds and then yanked open the door and we piled inside. Alarms began jangling loudly overhead. As soon as it closed, Ollie turned and reengaged the lock; and the trooper took his cue and continued to beat on the door, shaking it in its frame.

Immediately the five of us fanned out into a half-circle, guns out; but we needn't have bothered-the room in which we stood was big, dirty, and empty. And cold. Like the meatpacking plant had been, maybe thirty-five, forty degrees with damp air and black mold on the walls. The floor was old tile and had a big gutter down its middle, and to our left was a low stone wall beyond which were oversized showers. There was a row of heavy pegs on which were still hung a couple of old oilskin jackets. This was where the crab fishermen must have come in after offloading their catch, to shower the seawater and crab gook off their foul-weather gear before heading into the interior of the plant. There was a line of foul-smelling toilet stalls to our right and the wall in front of us was set with rows of lockers. A corridor broke left past the lockers. All of it was visible in the p.i.s.s-yellow glow of flickering fluorescent lights.

I signaled Skip to watch the hall while the rest of us shucked our coats and helmets and stowed them out of sight in a shower stall.

Skip signaled us by breaking squelch and then hand-signed that someone was coming. We all faded back. Ollie and Skip went into toilet stalls and crouched on the seats; Top and Bunny hid in shower stalls and I crouched down behind the low concrete wall. I could only see around the edge of it and there were shadows behind me so I was pretty well hidden. I had my silenced Beretta ready in a two-hand grip as I strained to hear the footsteps through the jangling alarm.

Right around the time we heard the running footsteps the alarm stopped. The trooper continued to pound on the door and now he was shouting, too, sounding genuinely outraged that no one had come to check out the fire. Then a man stepped into view with an AK-47 in his hands. He looked nervous and sweaty, his eyes round and white as he stared at the door. He licked his lips and looked around the shower room, but didn't see anything. We'd been careful not to scuff the floor.

After a moment's indecision he backpedaled, opened one of the lockers and put the a.s.sault rifle inside, closed it and pulled a small walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket. As he clicked it on he moved into the spill of weak light from one of the few overhead fluorescents that still worked. He was Middle Eastern, with a receding hairline, short beard, and a beaky nose. "I'm at the back door," he said into the walkie-talkie, speaking in Waziri, a dialect from southern Iran. I could just about understand him. "No the door is locked but I think the firemen want to get in. They are banging on the door." He listened for a few moments, but the voice on the other end was too garbled for me to understand. "Okay," he said, and clicked off the radio.

In very good English he yelled: "All right, all right, I'm coming!" He pushed the door open and the big state trooper filled the doorway with his bulk and shone his light right into the man's face.

"Didn't you hear me knocking, sir? Didn't you hear the explosion? How can you not be aware that half the fire companies in the county are in your parking lot?" As ordered, the trooper went immediately into an outraged tirade, which provoked a defensive reaction in the other man, and within seconds the two of them were locked in a screaming match. It was clear the Iranian was regretting opening the door, but he was caught up in his role now, playing the part of a clueless and aggrieved worker who wants no part of something that happened on the docks. He made a lot of noise about being a supervisor for a crew mapping out renovations for a building that had already been sold. He shouted names and phone numbers for the police to call. He also told the cop to get the d.a.m.n light out of his face; and he had to repeat that three times before the trooper did. Both the Iranian and the trooper could yell like fishwives. I checked my watch. The argument had lasted two minutes. Any second now another trooper would call the big guy away and they'd allow the "supervisor" to go about his business; and sure enough, I heard Gus Dietrich calling the cop away.

"The fire marshal is going to need you to sign a release form," the trooper yelled.

"Sure, sure, fine. Don't hara.s.s me. This is bulls.h.i.t. Here is the card for the lawyer who is handling things. He will be happy to handle whatever needs to be done."

The trooper s.n.a.t.c.hed the card out of the Iranian's fingers and stormed off. It was all very impressive, with exactly the right amount of indignation.

The Iranian pulled the door shut again and double-checked the lock. He keyed his walkie-talkie again and in rapid Waziri relayed what was happening. "Okay," he said at length, "I'm coming back." He pocketed the radio, cast one last look around, retrieved his AK-47 from the locker, and headed back along the hallway. I waited a full minute after the sound of his footfalls vanished before I stood up. The others crept out of hiding to join me.

"Skip, you watch the hall again," I whispered. "You see so much as a c.o.c.kroach you break squelch twice. Top, Bunny, I want you both to hold this position. Ollie, you're with me. Code names here on out. Small arms only."

They nodded and we began moving. Skip dropped down to a shooter's kneel using one of the rows of lockers as cover. There was enough light to see, but only just; and if it went lights-out we had night vision as backup. Bunny positioned himself behind the low wall so that it would serve as a bunker if we got chased. Top faded to the other side of the big room and vanished into a bank of shadows.

Ollie looked down the shadowy corridor. "Clear," he murmured. We set off into the belly of the beast.