Paul McEuen - Spiral

Maggie was willing to bet that those nightmares were about Fusarium spirale .

Bam! Bam! Maggie nearly jumped out of her skin at the thudding noise. Someone was banging on the front door.

She started toward the reception area. Could it be Jake?

Bam!

But why wouldn’t he have called?

She stopped, pulled out her phone, and flipped it open. The main display showed no messages. But she hit the key that took her to her voice mail. To her surprise, there were seven. All from Jake, all in the last half-hour. Why hadn’t her phone rang? Something was wrong with her phone.

The banging grew louder, a steady thump, thump, thump . She retrieved the gun that Vlad had left her, suddenly thankful to have it.

“Jake?” she asked, standing across the reception room from the front door, gun pointed toward it. Her hand was shaking. “Is that you?”

The banging stopped.

Complete silence. Her heart was pounding.

She forced herself to check the window. The parking lot was empty.

She leaned in close to the glass, trying to see the front door, but the angle was wrong. The window frame blocked her view.

Then she heard a voice: “Mom?”

“Dylan?”

No answer.

“Dylan?” She quickly flipped the deadbolt, turned the knob. He sounded scared. Really scared.

The door exploded open, catching Maggie square in the chest. The next thing she knew, she was on her back, stunned, staring up at the ceiling. The back of her skull screamed in pain, her right arm bent behind her. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, pulled herself up.

The gun barrel was less than six inches from her forehead.

JAKE PULLED TO A STOP ON THE ROAD LEADING TO THE herbarium, a good two hundred yards away. He picked up the Beretta from the passenger seat, released the safety.

He jogged to the building, staying out of sight of the front door. When he got close, he felt his heart jump into his throat. The front door was ajar.

Maggie would not have left that door open.

His pulse raced as he slid through the open door and into the waiting area, gun in the lead, ready to shoot. A weapon always upped the stakes. If you showed deadly force, you had to be willing to use it.

The room was empty, the phone off the hook. Beyond it, through a windowless metal-reinforced door, was the herbarium proper, with its rows of storage cabinets. A tough space to enter unnoticed. He’d have a target painted on his chest.

No choice. He had to go there.

Jake opened the door slowly. The main lights were out, the only illumination coming from the back of the room. One brown cabinet after another, each maybe seven feet tall and four feet wide, arranged in four rows like giant dominoes. He listened closely for any sound, then stepped inside. He took up a position against the closest cabinet on the left, keeping his breathing even and slow. If someone was here, they would have heard him enter. Better to play dumb.

“Maggie? You in here?”

Nothing.

“Maggie?”

A rustling came from somewhere in the middle of the room. He peered around the cabinet, gun ready, his finger half-squeezing the trigger. He saw a human form standing in a shadowed space between the two rows of cabinets.

Jesus . It was Maggie. Her mouth was taped closed, her hands behind her back. Bound and gagged.

Jake kept the gun up, worked his way carefully along the left wall.

Then Jake’s phone rang.

Jake pulled it from his pocket and glanced down. The caller ID said ANS OR SHE DIES.

Jake edged around until he could see Maggie again. He accepted the call.

“You’re going to do something for me,” the woman said, her voice calm and low. She had an accent—Chinese, Jake was pretty sure. He picked up a slight echo, probably from her voice carrying across the warehouse-sized space. The acoustics of the room were complex, sounds ricocheting off the walls and cabinets. He couldn’t yet tell where she was, but he was sure she was inside. And therefore not more than a hundred feet away.

Jake tried to think it through. She was most likely across the room, on the other side of Maggie. His best bet was to go left, circle around. Outflank her. “Who are you?” he said into the phone, listening for the echo.

“You can call me Orchid.”

“What do you want?”

“In time. Now. Look at your phone.”

Jake saw the numbers of his phone appear one by one, as if he was dialing. The dialing stopped on the second-to-last number. He recognized the number. It was Vlad’s cell.

“Here’s what you will do. You’ll tell him everything is fine. Tell him that Ms. Connor’s cellphone batteries were dead. You understand? Then ask him how his search is going. He’ll tell you. You’ll respond appropriately. Then you’ll hang up. Do you understand?”

“What do I get in return?”

“Nothing. You fail, I kill her. I’ll be on the line. I’ll cut you off if you try and say anything wrong. You understand?”

Jake kept moving, hoping the confusing acoustics would mask his forward progress. He swung around the next cabinet, gun in one hand and the phone in the other.

Nothing.

Jesus Christ, where was she?

The last number appeared. Then the phone was ringing.

Vlad picked up on the second ring. “Jake?”

Jake approached the next cabinet, gun drawn.

“Jake? Everything all right?”

He whipped around, ready to fire. Nothing. “Everything is fine. Where are you with the sequencing?”

“What was wrong with her phone?” Vlad asked.

“The battery was dead.”

Jake stepped around another cabinet, gun drawn. Nothing.

“What about the landline?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t answer it.”

“You didn’t ask her?”

“No. Vlad. It’s fine. Tell me about the sequence.”

Vlad didn’t respond. Then, “You sure you are fine?”

“Vlad. Leave it. It’s been a tough couple of days.” Jake continued his progress along the left wall. Only three more cabinets to go.

Jake was close. The next row was the one that was his best guess. “We’ve almost got it, Jake. Another half-hour.”

He heard the slight squeak of rubber. A shoe. It came from the other side of the cabinet he was now facing. He looked to his right. He could still see Maggie. The shoe wasn’t Maggie’s.

Moment of truth. He’d come around it quickly, firing.

He took a breath, held it. He muted his phone, then tossed it across the room. The phone struck the far wall with a clang. Jake turned the corner, gun held in both hands, ready to blow Orchid’s head off.

Standing there, staring right at him, was Dylan, eyes big as moons. Jake’s legs went rubbery, hands shaking at what he’d almost done. He’d come to within a fraction of a second of shooting.

He eased the pressure on the trigger, his knees almost buckling.

From behind him, a voice very close: “Put down the gun. Slowly.”

INSIDE OF AN HOUR, THEY HAD THE BRASS CYLINDER AT DETRICK.

Dunne watched by video hookup from a nearby secure room as Toloff picked it up and turned it over in her gloved hands. She was inside the USDA class-4 Uzumaki facility, in a full pressure suit with external air. She looked like an astronaut on the moon. The facility had a bunch of cameras, always on, but they were typically used only for archiving. They’d been tapped into, were being broadcast live, with power players up and down the security food chain watching every move. The head of Detrick, a general named Arvenick, was certainly watching, as was the FBI director. Dunne assumed the President was linked in as well.