Marc Cameron - National Security

“Locked and loaded, Doc,” Justin said.

The macaque spun on its heels, sliding sideways across the floor in midturn. Fangs bared, it sprang straight for Mahoney.

“Shoot!”

Justin was as good a shot as he said he was. The second dart hit C-45 center chest catching him in mid-jump with a pink plume. The macaque went limp and fell just inches from Mahoney’s face.

The double dose of ketamine wasn’t quite enough to put the agitated beast to sleep, but it slowed him enough that Megan was able pin him to the floor with the broom.

“Hit him with another one,” Mahoney panted. Lightheaded, she was breathing more CO2 than oxygen.

“Another one will kill him.”

“Damn you, Justin.” Mahoney clenched her teeth. “Quit arguing with me and put another dart in this little son of a bitch. I don’t know what kind of bug we gave him, but I’m not gonna go to the Slammer because you let him bite me.”

Justin fired another dart. C-45 slowed, and then lay still.

Mahoney held the broom in place another thirty seconds, then staggered back to reattach her suit to a coiled hose from the ceiling. Across the lab C-06 screamed and yipped, driven mad from watching the death of his friend. Mahoney drew three deep breaths of sweet air and then double-checked the door to the other macaque’s enclosure.

“Dr. Mahoney…” Justin’s voice was feeble in her earpiece-wobbly, like he was about to cry. “I think I have a little problem…”

Mahoney turned expecting to find C-45 alive, on the verge of attack. What she saw chilled her even worse.

Justin stood dazed with the Dist-Inject pistol dangling loosely in his right hand. Sticking from the bicep of his blue protective suit was a yellow-plumed dart. It was the first dart he’d fired into the macaque-the dart with a large gauge needle that was certain to contain blood and fluid from C-45.

Mahoney must have knocked the dart loose when she used the broom-and it had landed in Justin’s arm.

“Did it break the skin?” she asked, immediately forgiving Justin all his stupid mistakes. She shooed him toward the door and the decontamination chamber, where they’d be able to remove his suit and get disinfectant on the wound.

“Oh yeah,” Justin whispered. “Hurts like it went to the bone. What’s next, Meg… amputation?”

Justin was still half joking. She had to let him know how serious this was so he’d listen to her and follow her instructions to the letter. When she didn’t answer immediately, he looked up with terrified, childlike eyes.

Mahoney yanked the dart out of his arm, keeping the sharp end pointed carefully away.

“Seriously, Megan…” His voice shook as the gravity of his situation-and his own mortality-slowly dawned on him. Boyish brown eyes, the same eyes that had so often ogled Mahoney, shot around the lab, as if looking for an escape route. He was now absent any emotion but terror. “What about VSV? I read about a woman in Hamburg who got a needle stick and she was okay.”

“Well…” Mahoney didn’t want the boy to give up hope, but she couldn’t lie to him either. Treatments with vesicular stomatis virus were experimental at best. A female scientist in Germany had indeed lived after a contaminated needle stick, but there was no way to be sure if she ever actually contracted the Ebola virus in the first place. “Let’s just follow this through with the best protocols we have,” Megan said.

“Okay.” Justin hung his head, sniffing, tears dripping of the end of his nose. “Tell me the truth though. I mean it. Is this going to kill me?”

“Probably,” she said.

12 September Al-Hofuf

Win Palmer was fond of hammers and, as it turned out, prone to pull one out of his toolbox whenever he was given the opportunity. Quinn didn’t mind being a blunt instrument- pipe-hitters they called them in Iraq. Professional men who didn’t mind doing the dirty work. Deep down, no matter what sort of civilized mold his ex-wife tried to cram him into, Jericho knew he was born for the rough stuff. His heart never truly beat until it was going full bore. And he never felt so alive as when he was hunting evil men-or being hunted himself.

More than fifteen years earlier, shortly before Quinn’s first trip to the Middle East, his poli-sci professor at the Air Force Academy had read the class a quote from King Abdul Aziz bin Saud in 1930:

My Kingdom will survive only insofar as it remains a country difficult to access, where the foreigner will have no other aim, with his task fulfilled, but to get out.

Quinn’s task was to find out what Farooq had planned and then kill him-getting out was a secondary consideration.

Access to the Saudi Kingdom hadn’t grown any easier since the passing of King Abdul Aziz. It was no small miracle that roughly twenty-five hours after the call from his informant, Quinn found himself walking the stone pathways of King Faisal School of Veterinary and Equine Medicine in the oasis city of Al-Hofuf.

A tourist visa to Saudi Arabia on short notice was out of the question-with one exception. Arab member states belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, were immune from the strict travel requirements. The country of Kuwait was a member of the GCC. Posing as Katib Al Dashti, a wealthy Arabian horse buyer from Kuwait, Quinn was able to forgo the red tape. A Kuwaiti official friendly to the U.S. let it be known that Mr. Al Dashti had money to burn and was in the market for a high-quality Saudi stud horse to take back to his farm near Kuwait City. The details were drummed out during Quinn’s flight to King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh and subsequent three-hour train ride east to Al-Hofuf.

A note was waiting when he checked in to the Intercontinental Hotel. Mr. Othman with the university stud farm had left his business card and an invitation to stop by the stables after Asr — the afternoon call to prayer.

Quinn had checked the times for the five daily calls to prayer before leaving the U.S. Everything in the world of Islam revolved around these times. Asr fell shortly after 2:30 P.M.

Quinn had grabbed a quick shower and changed into a fresh white dishdasha and simple white ghutra headdress. In the lobby, he’d heard the call to prayer from a nearby minaret and followed the lead of other men as they knelt toward Mecca. Even in the five-star hotel, the Mutawwa’in — Saudi religious police, more formally known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice-kept a keen watch to see that no one shirked their duty when it came to prayer. Two bearded men with wooden canes had patrolled the opulent foyer, eyeing Quinn with the distrust they showed all under their domain. Both carried themselves with the haughty air of men given nearly unbridled government authority to prey on others-particularly those weaker than themselves. The will of Allah was to be strictly enforced, and as Quinn’s political science professor had pointed out so many years before: “Life in a police state is pretty good-if you are the state police.”

Though it would have been sweet indeed to spend a few quality moments alone with the two bullies, Quinn had only smiled, trying to conceal his disdain for the draconian measures the men represented.

The cabbie had negotiated a fair price for the quick trip from the Intercontinental Hotel to the university. He’d wanted to talk, but Quinn thought it best to play Mr. Al Dashti as a taciturn Kuwaiti who kept his thoughts to himself. In a country where impersonating a Muslim was against the law, getting caught spying could cost him his head.

Heat waves rippled up from the stone walkways as Quinn studied the concrete buildings, formulating plans as he went. The air was heavy, like the inside of an oven, but with a hint of humidity from the Persian Gulf less than a hundred kilometers to the east to make things even more uncomfortable. University students and staff were evidently wise enough to stay out of the afternoon heat and the walkways were all but deserted.