The Hades Factor Part 11

"As sure as I am of anything right now."

"d.a.m.n! That'll explode the Pentagon after all the medical headaches and lawsuits about Gulf War syndrome. Don't talk to anyone until I've checked this with the Pentagon. Not a word. You understand?"

Smith hung up in disgust. Politics!

He went to lunch to think and decided the next thing to do was to locate the "government doctors." Someone had ordered them to make those calls, but who?

Four long, wasted hours later, it was Smith who was ready to explode as he repeated into the telephone receiver, "...Yes, doctors who called Fort Irwin, California, Atlanta, and probably Boston. They asked nasty questions about the virus victims' deaths. The families are steamed, and I'm getting d.a.m.n mad, too!"

"I'm just doing my job, Dr. Smith." The woman on the other end of the line was testy. "Our director was killed in a hit-and-run accident yesterday, and we're shorthanded. Now tell me your name and your company again."

He took a long breath. "Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan. From U.S. Army Medical Research Inst.i.tute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick."

There was silence. She seemed to be writing down his name and "company." She came back on. "Hold, please."

He fumed. He had been running into the same bureaucratic red tape for the past four hours. Only the CDC had confirmed that they had not called the families. The surgeon general's office told him to put his request in writing. The various possible inst.i.tutes at NIH referred him to general information, and the man there said they had been ordered to not discuss anything to do with those deaths. No matter how much he had explained that he was a government researcher already working on those deaths, he had gotten nowhere.

By the time he was turned away by the departments of the navy and air force and Health and Human Services, he knew he was being stonewalled. His last chance was the NIH's Federal Resource Medical Clearing House (FRMC). After that he was out of options.

"This is Acting Director Aronson of FRMC. How can I help you, Colonel?"

He tried to speak calmly. "I appreciate your talking to me. There seems to be a team of government doctors interested in the virus at Fort Irwin, Atlanta, and---"

"Let me save you time, Colonel. All information on the viral incident at Fort Irwin has been cla.s.sified. You'll have to go through channels."

Smith finally blew up. "I have the virus! I'm working with it! USAMRIID is the information. All I want is---"

The dial tone buzzed angrily in his ear.

What in h.e.l.l was going on? It looked as if some idiot had clamped a lid on anything to do with the virus. No information without clearance. But from whom? And why?

He rushed out the door, strode furiously along the corridor, and barged past Melanie Curtis and into Kielburger's office. "What the h.e.l.l's going on, General? I try to find out who had those teams of 'government doctors' call Irwin and Atlanta and everyone yells 'top secret' and won't talk."

Kielburger leaned back in his desk chair. He knitted his thick fingers over his beefy chest. "It's out of our hands, Smith. The whole investigation. We're top secret. We do our research and then report to the surgeon general, military intelligence, and NSC. Period. No more detectives."

"In this investigation, we are the detectives."

"Tell the Pentagon that."

In a flash of understanding, the past frustrating three hours suddenly made sense. This could not be merely government red tape. There was too much of it, too many agencies were involved. And it was illogical. You did not take an investigation away from those who knew what was going on. Certainly not a scientific investigation. If there were other teams of "government doctors," there was no reason to keep that from him or anyone else at USAMRIID.

Unless they were not government doctors at all.

"Listen, General. I think---"

The general interrupted, disgusted. "Your hearing gone, Colonel? Don't you understand orders anymore? We stand down. The professionals will work on Dr. Russell's death. I suggest you go back to your lab and focus on the virus."

Smith took a deep breath. Now he was not only furious, he was scared. "Something's very wrong here. Either someone very powerful is manipulating the army, or it's the army itself. They want to stop the investigation. They're stonewalling this virus, and they're going to end up killing one h.e.l.l of a lot of people."

"Are you crazy? You're in the army. And those were direct orders!"

Smith glared. He had been fighting grief all day. Every time Sophia's face flashed into his mind, he had tried to banish her. Sometimes he would see something of hers--- her favorite pen, the photos on her office wall, the little bottle of perfume she kept on top of her desk--- and he would start to fall apart. He wanted to sink to his knees and howl at the unseen forces that had stolen Sophia, and then he wanted to kill them.

Smith snarled, "I resign. You'll have the paperwork this afternoon."

Now Kielburger lost his temper. "You can't quit in the middle of a G.o.dd.a.m.n crisis! I'll have you court-martialed!"

"Okay. I've got a month's leave coming. I'm taking it!"

"No leave! Be in your lab tomorrow or you're AWOL!"

The two men faced each other across Kielburger's desk. Then Smith sat down. "They murdered her, Kielburger. They killed Sophia."

"Murdered?" Kielburger was incredulous. "That's ridiculous. The autopsy report was clear. She died as a result of the virus."

"The virus killed her, yes, but she didn't contract it by any accident. We missed it at first, maybe because the reddening didn't appear for a few hours. But when we took a second look, we spotted the needle mark in her ankle. They injected the virus."

"A needle mark in her ankle?" Kielburger had a concerned frown. "Are you sure she wasn't---"

Smith eyes were hard blue agates. "There was no reason for an injection except to give her the virus."

"For G.o.d's sake, Smith, why? It makes no sense."

"It does if you remember the page cut from her logbook. She knew--- or suspected---- something they didn't want her to know. So they cut out her notes, stole her phone log, and killed her."

"Who are they?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out."

"Smith, you're upset. I understand. But there's a new virus loose to run across the world. There could be an epidemic."

"I'm not sure about that. We've got three widely separated cases that haven't infected anyone else in their areas. Did you ever hear of a virus breakout in which only one single person in an area was infected?"

Kielburger considered the question. "No, I can't say I have, but---"

"Neither has anyone else," Smith told him grimly. "We still get new viruses, and nature confounds us all the time. But if the virus is as deadly as it appears, why haven't there been more cases in each of the three areas since? At best it indicates this virus isn't very contagious. The victims' families and neighbors didn't get it. No one in the hospitals got it. Even the pathologist who was sprayed with blood didn't get it. The only person we can be sure of who got it from someone else is the Pickett girl in Atlanta, who had a direct blood transfusion from her father years ago. That indicates two facts: One, the virus, like HIV, appears to exist in a dormant state inside a victim for years, and then it suddenly turns virulent. Two, it seems to take a direct injection into the bloodstream for infection, either in the dormant state or the virulent state. In any event, an epidemic looks remote."

"I wish you were right." Kielburger grimaced. "But you're dead wrong this time. There are already more cases. People are sick and dying. This crazy virus may not be highly contagious in the usual ways, but it's still spreading."

"What about Southern California? Atlanta? Boston?"

"Not in any of those places. It's in other parts of the world--- Europe, South America, Asia."

Smith shook his head. "Then it's still all wrong." He paused. "They murdered Sophia. You understand what that means?"

"Well, I'm---"

Smith stood up and leaned across the desk. "It means someone has this virus in a test tube. An unknown, deadly virus no one's been able to match or trace. But someone knows what this virus is, and where it comes from, because they've got it."

The general's heavy face turned purple. "Got it? But---"

Smith hammered his fist on the desk. "We're dealing with people who have given the virus to other people! To Sophia. They're willing to use it like a weapon!"

"My G.o.d." Kielburger stared at him. "Why?"

"Why and who, that's what we've got to find out!"

Kielburger's burly body seemed to quiver in shock. Then he abruptly stood up, his florid face as white as it had ever been. "I'll call the Pentagon. Go and write up what you told me and what you want to do from here on."

"I've got to go to Washington."

"All right. Get whatever you need. I'll cut official orders for you."

"Yessir." Smith stood back, relieved and a little stunned that he had finally gotten through Kielburger's thick brain. Maybe the general was not as rigid and stupid as he had thought. For a moment he almost felt affection for the irritating man.

As he ran out the door, he heard Kielburger pick up his phone. "Get me the surgeon general and the Pentagon. Yes, both of them. No, I don't care which one first!"

Specialist Four Adele Schweik flipped the intercept shunt on her telephone inside her cubicle, warily listening for any sound of Sergeant Major Daugherty leaving her office. At last she lied briskly into her phone, "Surgeon General Oxnard's Office. No, General Kielburger, the surgeon general isn't in the office. I'll have him call as soon as he returns."

Schweik glanced around. Fortunately, Sandra Quinn was busy in her cubicle, and the sergeant major was in her office. Kielburger's office was calling out again. Schweik answered in a different voice, "Pentagon. Please hold."

She quickly dialed a number she read from a list in her top drawer. "General Caspar, please? Yes, General Kielburger calling urgently from USAMRIID." She took him off hold, returned to her own line, and dialed again. She spoked softly but rapidly, hung up once more, and went back to her work.

5:50 P.M.

Thurmont, Maryland Smith finished packing in the empty house under the shoulder of Catoctin Mountain. He felt a little ill, and he figured that was no surprise. Sophia was everywhere, from the bottled water in the kitchen to the scent of her in their bed. It broke his heart. The emptiness of the house echoed through him. The house was a tomb, the sepulchre of his hopes, filled with Sophia's dreams and laughter. He could not stay here. He could never live here again.

Not in the house, and not in her condo. He could think of nowhere in the world he wanted to be. He knew he would have to figure that out eventually, but not now. Not yet. First he had to find her killers. Smash them. Crush them into screaming ma.s.ses of blood and bones and tissue.

In his office after he had left Kielburger, Smith had written up his reports and notes, printed them out, and driven a circuitous route home, watching behind. He had seen no one follow to the big saltbox house he had shared for so many happy months with Sophia. When he had finished packing for a week of any weather, loaded his service Beretta, and grabbed his pa.s.sport, address book, and cell phone, he dressed in his uniform and waited for Kielburger's call with the word from the Pentagon.

But Kielburger did not call.

It was growing dark at 1800 as he drove back to Fort Detrick. Ms. Melanie Curtis was not at her secretary's desk, and when he checked the general's office, the general was gone, too, but neither office looked as if it had been tidied up for the night. Very unusual. He looked at his watch: 1827. They must be on coffee breaks. But at the same time?

Neither was in the coffee room.

Kielburger's office was still empty.

The only explanation Smith could think of was the Pentagon had called Kielburger to Washington in person, and he had taken Melanie Curtis with him.

But would not Kielburger have called to tell him?

No. Not if the Pentagon had ordered him not to.

Uneasy, and telling no one, he went back down to his battered Triumph. Pentagon permission or not, he was going to Washington. He could not sleep another night in the Thurmont house. He turned on the ignition and drove out the gate. He saw no one watching from outside, but to be sure, he circled the streets for an hour before driving to I-270 and heading south for the Capital. His mind roamed over the past with Sophia. He was beginning to find comfort in remembering the good times. G.o.d knew, that was all he had left.

He had had one good night's sleep in three days and wanted to be sure no one was tailing him, so he pulled off abruptly at Gaithersburg and watched the exit to see whether anyone followed. No one did. Satisfied, he drove to the Holiday Inn and checked in under a false name. He drank two beers in the motel bar, ate dinner in the motel dining room, and went back to his room to watch CNN for an hour before dialing Kielburger at the office and at home. There was still no answer.

Suddenly he sat bolt upright, shocked. It was the third item on the national report: "The White House has reported the tragic death of Brig. Gen. Calvin Kielburger, medical commander of the United States Army Medical Research Inst.i.tute o f Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The general and his secretary were found dead in their homes, apparently victims of an unknown virus that has already killed four people in the United States, including another research scientist at Fort Detrick. The White House emphasizes these tragic deaths are isolated, and there is no public danger at this time."

Stunned, Smith's mind quickly grappled with what he knew: Neither Kielburger nor Melanie Curtis had worked in the Hot Zone with the virus. There was no way they could have contracted it. This was no accident or natural spreading of the virus. This was murder... two more murders! The general had been stopped from going to the Pentagon and the surgeon general, and Melanie Curtis had been stopped from telling anyone the general's intentions.

And what had happened to the complete secrecy everyone working on the virus was supposed to maintain? Now the nation knew. Someone somewhere had done a complete reversal, but why?

"...in connection with the tragic deaths at Fort Detrick, the army is requesting all local police watch for Lt. Col. Jonathan Smith, who has been declared absent without leave from Detrick."

He froze in front of the motel television. For a moment it seemed as if the walls were closing in on him. He shook his head; he had to pa.r.s.e this out clearly. They had enormous power, this enemy that had murdered Sophia, the general, and Melanie Curtis. They were out there looking for him, and now the police wanted him, too.

He was on his own.

PART TWO.

CHAPTER.

FOURTEEN.