Marc Cameron - National Security

Quinn pushed a silver button flush with the white tile wall. “Zafir,” he said, “we’d like to give you the opportunity to tell your side of the story.”

“Imbecile!” Zafir scoffed. He turned gingerly, wincing in pain to face the wall away from the observation window. “Do you not see that I am at peace with Allah? I have prepared myself to die long ago.”

“I know you believe you are prepared.” Quinn kept his voice low, belying the hot torrent that churned in his gut. He firmly believed anger had little place in his chosen profession. Dispassionate action was always better-but he was human. “Things have changed in a great way since you began your plans.” He paused. “Many, many things.”

“Tell me…” The Bedouin turned again, despite his pain, tilting his head toward the door, narrowing bloodshot eyes. The flesh around his lips hung loose around his mouth, giving him a grotesque, clownlike effect. Pandora was beginning to take her toll on his body. “Are you the one called Jericho?”

“I am indeed.”

Zafir swallowed, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Then I will tell you this about the sheikh. He is a very wise man. Make no mistake, he will find out who you are and he will come for you.”

“Tell me where he is and I will go to him.”

“He will flay the skin from those you love.” Zafir’s voice rose from a hoarse whisper into a menacing growl. “He will send your women-”

“As I said-” Quinn pressed the intercom again, interrupting the tirade. His patience was at an end. “Circumstances have changed. Do not forget, we are in possession of your suicide drug. You will have the opportunity to die, as you wished, but, as you are fully aware, your death will not come as quickly. Perhaps you remember the faces of the American soldiers and the innocent young girl you infected with this same virus back in Al-Hofuf…”

Chains clanked against the metal bed as Zafir jerked against his shackles. A hollow scream-the wailing roar of a damned soul-poured from the intercom box until Quinn pushed the button to silence it.

Three doors down from Zafir, in another soundproof room, Carrie Navarro and her son sat on the edge of a hospital bed behind a glass partition. A careful examination of Zafir’s blood showed a ninety-nine-percent chance that his virus had not yet matured to the contagious phase when they’d had contact. Because of this-not to mention all the poor woman had been through-Megan had allowed mother and son to be housed together. But there was still a great deal to learn about the Pandora virus, so they were not allowed to roam around with the others.

Mahoney pressed the intercom button as they walked past their isolation room. “Hey, Carrie. Hey, Christian. How’s it going in there?”

Everyone in the hall waved. Christian waved from the safety of his mother’s lap. Carrie smiled. “Hey,” she said wanly. Her physical recovery was going to be much easier than her mental one. Luckily she had her little boy and, Megan thought, as she looked at Thibodaux and both of the Quinn brothers beaming through the glass, that lucky little boy now had three extremely protective godfathers.

“You know, my brother’s still stuck on his ex-wife, right?” Bo sidled up next to Mahoney after they said good night to Navarro and walked down the long hall toward the outer lab and the room that would serve as their chow hall and common area for the next two weeks of quarantine.

Under the pitiful gaze of a love-struck Justin, Megan grinned, tossing her head in the best flirt she could muster. “I’d heard that.”

“Well,” Bo said, “the big dude from Louisiana tells me Jericho took you for a spin on his Beemer. If you’re not sick of Quinn boys after all this, I could take you for a ride on a sure-enough American bike when we get out of this place.”

Mahoney looked at Jericho, who shrugged.

“I can only vouch for him as a good kid brother,” he said. “Beyond that, I’m pretty certain he belongs in prison.”

“Hey dude, malum prohibitum not malum in se. ” Bo hooked a thumb toward his chest, showing off his Latin. “The things I choose to do are wrong, only because The Man says they are. Nothing I do is inherently bad.” He raised a brow, looking directly at Megan with a sly grin. “Well, almost nothing.”

Megan bit her bottom lip. The notion of taking some time away from work with the rough-and-tumble Bo Quinn was an interesting proposition. After spending the past few days getting to know men like Jericho and Jacques, she just couldn’t come to grips with going back to the plain-vanilla types she’d dated in her previous life.

Though the idea of being alone with Bo the biker terrified her as much as the thought of getting a tattoo, it beckoned to the same sense of exploration that had pulled her into field research in the first place. She’d heard of women who married soldiers, police officers, or firefighters and when they divorced or found themselves alone for whatever reason, always went back to someone from the same adventurous ilk. Such men were what they knew-and in the end, she supposed, the very thing they craved.

Justin steadfastly refused to leave the BSL, making up reason after reason he should stay. Once they’d all come in and shared his air, he was committed and had to stay for the duration. Now he plodded along a few steps behind Megan wherever she went, his shoulders stooped, his face hangdog. Completely intimidated by the muscular biker with a tattoo of a black octopus on his forearm, the poor kid’s chin quivered when he spoke. His eyes fluttered as if he might break into tears at any moment. Megan knew it was cruel, but she had to stifle a giggle every time she saw him.

Thibodaux walked a few yards ahead talking on his cell phone, waving his free arm as he spoke in animated Italian to his Delta-Whiskey. He suddenly spun to face the others, blocking any further progress down the hall. Moving his head slowly from side to side like a disbelieving buffalo, a huge grin smeared across his face. “It must have happened before my last deployment to Iraq…”

“What?” Mahoney asked, though the answer was written all over the big Marine’s face.

Thibodaux grabbed Jericho by both shoulders with his huge paws, dancing him around in a tight circle. “Yet once again, l’ami. Yours truly is gonna be a papa…”

“Good grief, Jacques.” Mahoney’s mouth fell open. “How many will this make?”

“Seven,” Thibodaux said, lost in the idea of having another child.

“As a trained epidemiologist, I think I need to have a talk with your wife,” Mahoney said. “There must be something in the air at your house.”

“Oh there was, beb.” The big Cajun winked a glistening eye. “Her feet.”

“You think we got it all?” Mahoney asked Jericho, after everyone else was asleep and the two of them sat in the chow hall. A carton of butter pecan ice cream sat on the table between them.

Quinn sighed. He was exhausted down to the marrow of his bones, but his mind raced with thoughts of a dozen scenarios, none of them good.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we can account for the martyrs because of the photographs. I only found three vials missing from the case in Al-Hofuf. If we assume that each martyr brought a vial of toxin to commit suicide, we got them all. There could be another lab, but my guess is Zafir would have been a little more on the smug side had there been others with the virus walking around somewhere out there.”

Mahoney stuck her spoon in the ice cream and leaned forward on the table, resting her chin on folded arms. “It’s almost too overwhelming…”

“I guess most things are,” Quinn said, “if you think about them too long. You’re the one who decided to name this particular virus Pandora.”