Patient Zero_ A Joe Ledger Novel Part 29

I stuck out my hand. "Thanks for saving our a.s.ses in there."

He looked embarra.s.sed as he took my hand. "Sorry it wasn't sooner."

"Believe me when I tell you that it was in the very nick of time."

He nodded and headed off. Rudy and I watched him go.

"He's a good guy," Rudy said. "I had a chance to get to know him yesterday and I saw him in action this morning. If there really is a mole in the DMS, it isn't going to be him."

"Would you bet your life on that?'

Rudy thought about it, nodded. "I surely would."

"Glad to hear it." We started walking over to a card table on which plastic tubs of ice were set. I rummaged inside and pulled out a bottle of green tea for him and a c.o.ke for me.

Rudy tapped my bottle with his. "To life."

"Amen to that. Look, Rude, Church just got finished interrogating the prisoner." I told him about what Church had said to Aldin.

"Will he save the man's family?"

"I think so. I heard him make the call and I don't think he was bluffing."

"That's comforting."

"That's all you have to say? The guy's a self-admitted monster, for Christ's sake!"

"Joe, you're tired and you've got symptoms of postincident stress, so I'm going to cut you a lot of slack. You're all upset because Church threatened the man's family, that he used psychological manipulation, that he-"

"He did more than that, Rude. He tore that guy to pieces."

"Physically?"

"No, but-"

"So, all he did was scare the man into cooperating. No physical torture, no thumbscrews, no s.e.xual or religious humiliation." He shook his head. "I wish I had been there to see it. It sounds brilliant."

I stared at him. "Christ! Don't tell me you approve of this?"

"Approve? Maybe. Admire, certainly. But turn it around, cowboy, and tell me how you would have extracted that same information. Could you have gotten the man to speak without resorting to physical torture? No, what you're upset about is that you don't know whether he was bluffing about the threats to the man's family. You soldiers and cops talk very tough. Over the last twenty-four hours I've heard a lot of 'kill 'em all' and 'let G.o.d sort 'em out' stuff; lots of 'we're heartbreakers and widow-makers' trash talk. To a large degree it might even be true, but a fair amount of this stuff is team cheers to get the players ready. Down on the real level you're each human and there's no way you can truly separate yourselves from the realities of war. You might have had to hurt Aldin physically in order to get him to talk; you might even have had to do permanent physical damage to him. Doing that would be hurtful to you, but it's a battlefield thing, ultimately not much different than a sword thrust or a kick to the cajones. What you're reacting to here is that Church inflicted damage on a completely different level. He hurt the man psychically, emotionally. Tough as you are I'm not sure you can do that, and you are very sure that you can't. And yet Church did not so much as slap this man across the face."

"Okay, okay, I get the relativity of it, O wise Yoda," I griped, "but that still doesn't cover all of it."

"I know," Rudy said, nodding, "you're afraid that Church might have been serious when he threatened that man's children."

I stared into the open mouth of my c.o.ke bottle. "Yeah," I said. "He called himself a monster."

"Yes, but let's both hope that he really isn't that kind of monster."

"And if he is?"

Rudy shook his head. "I've said it before, cowboy. It must be terrible to be him."

Chapter Seventy-Two.

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 6:50 A.M.

RUDY WENT BACK into one of the trailers to conduct some postevent sessions with the remnants of Alpha Team. I spotted Grace standing at the aid station and headed over. Her eyes were red-rimmed but for now her tears were done. Maybe she'd cried herself dry, the magazine empty. I hoped Rudy would take some time for her soon.

As I approached she looked up, and in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds several emotions crossed her face. Grief, of course; but also pleasure and a little surprise, maybe as she realized that she was smiling at seeing me. Just as I was smiling to see her, and the sight of her was sending a warm and tingly wave through my stomach. The realization gave me a little jab of surprise, too. I felt it down deep. Understand, I've always held office romances in some degree of contempt, regarding the lovers as perpetrators of bad judgment, but as I became aware of feelings for Grace-however new and unformed they were-I couldn't work up the slightest flicker of self-contempt. The angel on my right shoulder was getting his a.s.s handed to him by the devil on my left.

"How are you," I asked. "Or is that the single stupidest question ever asked since Nero asked his friends if they'd like to hear a little music?"

"I'll get by," she answered, handing me a cardboard cup of coffee. "I'm not going to let myself think too much about it about my team." She sniffed and tried to smile. "I plan to have a complete breakdown when this is all over."

"If you want company for that, let me know."

She gave me a penetrating look and nodded. "I may take you up on that." She changed tack. "Your friend Detective Spencer's been asking for you. Or, to be precise, he's been asking where the effing h.e.l.l you are and what do you think you're playing at having him dragged out by a goon squad while he's on medical leave. Words to that effect. He's not the mildest of men."

"Jerry's okay. Good cop."

"You must know that we interviewed him." She paused. "That's why Mr. Church and I were at the hospital. At St. Michael's. We'd had our eye on Spencer since he first joined the task force, and after he was shot we followed his ambulance to the hospital and 'borrowed' him once he was free of the ER doctors." She shuddered. "I don't like to think what would have happened if Mr. Church hadn't been on site when the infection began spreading through the hospital."

"You think it could have been worse?"

"I know it would have been." She gave me a strange smile. "It's funny, but in all the time I've known him, in all that the DMS has done since I've been seconded here from Barrier, it's the only time I've ever seen Church take direct action."

"I get the feeling that he'd be pretty effective. He has the look. What was he, Special Forces?"

"I truly don't know what his background is, and I've covertly tried to find out. I think he's used his MindReader system to erase his past. No fingerprints, no DNA on file, no voice-print patterns, nothing. He's a ghost and these days no one's a ghost." She shook her head. "When the walkers came flooding down the halls heading toward the lobby Church didn't get angry, didn't even show the shock he had to be feeling. He simply took action. I was outside by then, establishing a perimeter, so I only had glimpses of him through the big gla.s.s doors in the lobby. He didn't seem to do much, but as the walkers reached him they fell, one after the other. I've only ever seen one person move with that kind of ruthless efficiency."

"Oh? Who's that? Maybe we should recruit him."

"We did," she said, locking my eyes with hers.

"Ah," I said, feeling enormously uncomfortable. "I guess I need to add 'ruthless efficiency' to my resume."

"You know what I mean. You don't hesitate. It doesn't seem to affect you."

The image popped into my head of the walkers in the hallway climbing over each other to get to me and how my hands almost slipped as I slapped a magazine into my gun. And then a second and more terrible picture began flashing on the big movie screen in my head: my hands reaching out to Grace in the lab and the moment of hesitation I felt as I worked up the nerve to break her neck to spare her from becoming a zombie.

"Believe me, Grace, it does. Really and truly. I nearly lost it a couple of times over the last day. No joke."

Grace shook her head. " 'Nearly' doesn't count. But even so Church is different, colder. He's less " She tried to put a word to it and couldn't.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I saw a little bit of that today." I told her about the interrogation, but like Rudy Grace seemed unmoved.

"What did you learn?" she asked.

"Not a lot, though Church is still working on him. The code name for the walker plague is Seif al Din. Translates as 'the Sword of the Faithful'; but it has a second connection, and that may be the biggest tidbit we got out of Aldin. He confirmed that El Mujahid sometimes takes the name of Seif al Din. Kind of like Carlos being the Jackal."

She nodded. "El Mujahid is a clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d. There are a lot of blokes in counterterrorism who would love to hang him very slowly from a tall tree."

"I'll buy the rope. But I'm not sure how fast we should label El Mujahid as our supervillain here, Grace. I read the Homeland profile on him when I was with the task force and I don't recall anything that said he has a background in science. Explosives, maybe, but not medicine. He's more of a field general than a lab rat."

"Then he's hired lab rats. Bin Laden isn't an airline pilot but his people still flew planes into the towers."

"Mm," I said noncommittally. "Well, I'd better get inside before Jerry has kittens."

She took my hand and gave it a hard, quick squeeze and started to turn away, then paused, doubt on her face. "Joe We have the plant, the army of walkers they were making, the computers. Did Aldin mention anything about any other sites? Any cells we've missed?"

"No. He said he'd overheard the guards talking about possible locations for another site but he didn't think they'd settled on a spot yet. This plant here is the main site. The factory floor, so to speak; and a lot of the stuff that was stored here was intended for use with future cells. He said the Delaware meatpacking plant was relatively new. A tiny lab, no computers, just a bunch of stored walkers. He didn't even know about the captured kids or the experiments planned for them."

"Do you think he was lying?"

I shook my head. "You weren't in the room. Once he started talking he kept on talking. Hu got enough information to begin working on a research protocol."

"Even so, what's your intuition tell you? Have we stopped the immediate threat? Do we have time now to rebuild our teams? Or is the clock still ticking?"

"I don't know, Grace," I told her honestly. She nodded glumly and headed off and I went to find Jerry Spencer.

Chapter Seventy-Three.

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 7:07 A.M.

JERRY SPENCER WAS p.i.s.sed.

"Hey," I said. "Thanks for comin-"

"I thought I told you to leave this s.h.i.t alone, Joe."

"No, you told me that you hadn't heard about the DMS and told me that I hadn't, either."

"Same d.a.m.n thing. A smarter cop would have backed off, and I don't appreciate being dragged into this. I made that clear to Church and that British broad and I thought I'd made it clear to you."

"The British broad's name is Major Courtland," I snapped. "And too f.u.c.king bad if you don't want to be involved. Look, I know you're short and you've got your whole retirement mapped out, but this is national security. This is a crisis on a par with nine-eleven, and in a lot of ways it's worse. So stop whining about it, grow a set, and help us bag these rat-b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

He tried to switch gears. "Why'd you have them drag me into this? FBI's got better crime scene investigators than me."

"b.a.l.l.s. You may be a world-cla.s.s pain in the a.s.s, Jerry, but you're also the best of the best. I got no time for second team. You got the magic and you were available. You want me to beg? Is that it?"

We glared at each other, but then I could see something shift behind his eyes. Something I'd said had hit the mark. He stepped back and flapped an arm at me. "Ah s.h.i.t!"

"So what does that mean? Are you in?"

We were inside the shower room of the crab plant and he looked down at the floor as he absently rubbed the spot on his chest where bullets had cracked his sternum. "Thirty years, Joe. Thirty years on the job and I never so much as caught a scratch. Not a splinter, and then that a.s.shole d.a.m.n near punches my ticket. If I hadn't had the Kevlar I'd be dead."

"Yeah, man, I know. Upside is that you did have the Kevlar. Universe threw you a bone."

"Christ, you been reading The Secret or some s.h.i.t?" He scowled at me and then sighed long and deeply, wincing a little as he did so. Then he gave me a crooked little smile. "You're a total pain in my a.s.s you know that? You at least save that Cigarette boat for me?"

"Um, well, no," I said, ". we kind of blew it up."

"c.r.a.p." He turned and looked around at the ruined sh.e.l.l of the shower room. "All right, dammit, let's get this dog and pony show on the road."

I offered him my hand and we shook. "Thanks, Jer. I owe you on this."

"You owe me a frigging boat."

"I'll see what I can do," I said, wondering if Church had a friend in that industry.

There was an FBI forensics investigator on hand to a.s.sist Jerry and I was amused to see that it was Agent Simchek-my old friend Buckethead, who'd braced me at the beach and dragged me into this mess. He didn't return my nod and only gave Jerry a hard and unsympathetic stare. The FBI never likes playing second chair to ordinary cops. Simchek carried a full evidence collection kit and an air of disapproval.

I wasn't fluffing Jerry's ego when I said he was the best. I've worked with him on the task force and on a few other cases that had connections between Washington and Baltimore. I'm good with a crime scene, but Jerry is better than me or anyone I ever heard of. If there was any way I could persuade him to sign on to the DMS as head of forensics I was going to give it a h.e.l.l of a try. Church said that I could have whatever I wanted.

Jerry looked at the rows of lockers behind which Skip had been hiding. "There was a struggle here." He squatted down, careful of his chest, and looked at the floor and shone a penlight at different angles to evaluate the shadows cast by dust and debris. He asked Simchek for evidence markers, and received a stack of small plastic A-frames. Jerry put four of the numbered orange markers down on the floor and started to get up, then settled back down on his upturned heels and narrowed his eyes for a moment, then grunted and said, "Clever."

Simchek and I looked at each other. Jerry frowned for a moment and then added a fifth marker, right between the first and second set of lockers. That's when I saw it but I can't pretend that I ever would have seen it if Jerry hadn't spotted it first. It's why I asked for him. Simchek, to give him credit, was only a half-step behind me.

"Is that a door?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," Jerry said as he stood. "I understand one of your boys went missing here at the infiltration point. There's no other way out of this room except the corridor and the doorway that they blasted. Scuff marks pretty clearly show that he was using the first set of lockers as a shooting blind. I figured that unless he's a d.a.m.n fool there had to be another access point, otherwise it would have been impossible to sneak up on an armed sentry. Another door made the most sense, so I looked for one and voila! But we won't open it until the bomb squad checks it out. But I'll bet you a shiny nickel that this puppy opens silently."

I made the call and we moved on but stopped almost immediately as Jerry and Simchek both had their first look at what filled the corridor. The air was thick with blowflies. Corpses were sprawled singly or lay together as if in some grotesque dance; they slumped against the walls or lay in pieces. Beyond the first few bodies was a mountain range of the dead. The air was heavy with the drone of blowflies.

"Holy " Simchek's voice failed him and he closed his eyes. Jerry sagged and almost leaned against the wall for support. After a few moments Jerry took a bottle of Vicks VapoRub from his pocket, dabbed some on his upper lip, and handed it without comment to me; I took some and gave it to Simchek. Even with the menthol goo blocking out the smell the scene was almost too intense to handle. We literally had to crawl over the bodies in order to get to the far end of the corridor. That's an experience I knew was going to stay with me.

When we got to the spur of the hall where the bomb had gone off I saw that a lot of the evidence-the clothes and other items-were gone, blown to atoms along with several members of Alpha Team. All that was left in some places were swatches of cloth and smears of red. Jerry stood for a long time and looked at the clothing that remained, whistling a soundless song.

Simchek leaned close to me and whispered, "He run out of ideas?"

Without turning to us Jerry said, "You want to tell an Italian mother how to make gravy?"

Simchek frowned at me. "What?"

"He means shut the f.u.c.k up," I interpreted, and Simchek lapsed into a wounded silence.