Marc Cameron - National Security

“Are you shittin’ me?” Thibodaux grinned. “Mr. Miyagi works for you?”

“ Mrs. Miyagi,” Palmer corrected. “And no ‘wax on, wax off ’ jokes. This woman might not look like it, but she could seriously kick your ass.”

Quinn’s cell phone began to buzz in his pocket.

“Go ahead and take that,” Palmer said, pushing open the door. “But don’t loiter out here too long. Mrs. Miyagi is expecting you-and she’s not someone you’d want to have mad at you.”

Red oak and yellow sycamore leaves, the beginnings of an early fall, swirled under the tires in the feeble glow of the taillights as the limo crunched down the deserted street to leave the two men alone.

Quinn pressed the button on his cell. “Hello.”

Thibodaux leaned against the ghostly white bark of a sycamore tree and stared into the night.

“Daddy?”

Quinn put aside thoughts of grimy politics and let himself go soft inside. His five-year-old daughter was the one person in the world who never disappointed him.

“Well, hello, Mattie. What are you doing up so late?” She gave her trademark giggle. “Daddy, it’s always late where you are. It’s only eight in Alaska.”

Quinn looked at the Aquaracer on his wrist. Midnight. She was so far away.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Are you killing surgeons?”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“On CNN they said that Americans are killing surgeons in Iraq. You’re an American.”

“I think you should stop watching CNN.”

Thibodaux chucked softly in the darkness. “Tell her to watch Fox,” he whispered. “I don’t let my boys watch nuthin’ but Fox.”

Quinn waved him off.

“I saw a girl moose today in our yard,” Mattie said.

“Wow.” Quinn didn’t care what they talked about. Just hearing the kid’s voice soothed his soul. “Mom told me she had to drive you to school.”

“I heard Mom tell Grandma she’s worried about you.”

“Is that right?” Quinn couldn’t help but smile that Kim would talk about him at all. Still, he didn’t like the idea of her worrying Mattie. “Can I talk to Mommy a minute?”

“She said to tell you she’s sleeping.”

Quinn nodded, loving his daughter’s naive honesty.

“I have to go, Daddy. Don’t let the surgeons get you. You’re my bestie.”

“You’re my bestie too, sweetheart. Love you…” Quinn returned the phone to his pocket, fighting back a tear.

Thibodaux hung his big head. “I thought I’d be home spoonin’ the delta whiskey tonight. Hell, I don’t even have a toothbrush. I hope Mrs. Miyagi has an extra.”

Quinn stared down the empty road, toward the orange glow of D.C. He thought of what Win Palmer had said. Deniability — it gave any professional soldier pause. It was another word for throwing someone under the proverbial bus.

Dry leaves skittered across the pavement on the cool breeze, sending a chill crawling up Quinn’s neck.

He threw on the Vanson jacket and glanced up at the forlorn Thibodaux. The mountainous Cajun studied him, cocking his head.

“Somethin’s eatin’ at you, ain’t it, Chair Force?”

“I was just thinking.” Quinn shrugged. “You know I grew up in Alaska, right?”

“Always wanted to see the place… in the summer, mind you.”

“The year before I left for the Academy,” Quinn said, “I went on this big deer hunt with my brother and dad on Kodiak.”

Thibodaux raised an eyebrow. “There’s some mighty big bears on that island, beb.”

Quinn put his hands in his pockets against the chill. “It was dark and cool… just like tonight. We took three Sitka blacktail deer about dusk and were covered with blood by the time we headed back to camp with the meat in our packs.”

Thibodaux gave a low whistle. “Not a good way to be in bear country.”

“You’re telling me,” Quinn said, remembering the event as if it had just happened. “On the way back, we came around a corner in the alder brush next to a little mountain stream and there was this live salmon lying in the middle of the trail. Its skin had been peeled off right before we happened along and it was still flopping around in the mud. It had some pretty serious teeth marks in its tail. The bear was still nearby and pissed, thrashing around in the alders, close enough we could smell him. No doubt, he wanted to get back to his meal of freshly skinned salmon.”

“You feel that way now?” Thibodaux asked. “Like a hunter covered with blood in the middle of bear country?”

“Nope.” Quinn sighed, walking toward the darkened brick house. “I feel like the fish.”

0700 hours Fort Detrick, Maryland U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (Usamriid)

A half dozen blue Chemturion suits hung on pegs along the cold tile wall, looking like the flayed skins of gargantuan Smurfs.

Dressed in a fresh pair of green hospital scrubs complete with paper slippers, Mahoney stepped into her rubberized suit just as the heavy bass beat of “Short Skirt and Long Jacket” began to thump in her earpiece. Cake was Justin’s favorite band and playing the song on the intercom was just another one of his ways of paying homage to her. He clipped the iPod onto the drawstring of his scrubs and stepped into his own anti-exposure suit-a larger version of Mahoney’s.

She checked the gaskets at her wrists, stretching fingers inside the heavy-duty rubber gloves. They were the first line of defense in a series of three layers, the next being cut-resistant Kevlar, followed by purple nitrile gloves. Nitrile ripped easier than latex when it was punctured, but in the deadly stuff they worked with, that was a plus. A glove with an unnoticed hole, even a tiny one, could spell a slow and agonizing death. Better the thing just fell to pieces once it was compromised.

Turning slowly, one at a time, each checked the other’s gear, looking for correct closure on all the zippers and latches on the bulky full-body suits.

Justin did an ungainly pirouette but, thankfully, kept his mouth shut.

Mahoney punched her code into the pad beside the first airlock. The heavy steel door slid open with a sucking whoosh. She had to pass through four doors to get to the Biosafety level-four containment lab, the place where scientists worked on the nastiest bugs- animalcules, the pioneers had called them. Past the second door, down a long hall to the left, was the airlock to the infamous Slammer, the quarantined medical unit where researchers were sentenced if they suffered exposure, or even possible exposure, to one of the booger bugs in BSL-4-highly contagious and with no known cure. The place got its name from the sound the heavy door made when they sealed you inside for observation-maybe to never again come out and breathe fresh air.

A visit to the Slammer wasn’t exactly a death sentence, but the only two people she’d seen go in had cracked under the isolation, emerging three weeks after their initial interment with no symptoms of the threatened disease but a multitude of facial twitches and body tics they hadn’t had when they went in. Mahoney had been inside once, on a tour, and found it to be like the inside of a sterile submarine with grom-meted armholes for unseen medical staff to work on isolated patients. One of the Slammer veterans had described it as living for three weeks inside an empty bleach bottle. Even the outer door gave Mahoney the creeps and she shuffled past as quickly as her blue suit would let her.

“All right,” she said, moving through the third lock. “Time to get to work. Two monkeys dead, two still alive?”

“That’s what the instruments read,” Justin said.

“Curiouser and curiouser…” Mahoney mused as she moved toward the last door. “I thought they’d all have crashed by now.”