Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

“Let me ask something,” Skip said. “The way you dropped Colonel Hanley… don’t you think that was a little harsh?”

“Church said something that had me scared and pissed off.” I told them about Rudy sitting there with a gun to his head.

“She-e-e-it,” Top said, stretching it out to about six syllables.

“That’s not right,” Skip said.

“Maybe not,” I admitted, “but it put me in a zero-bullshit frame of mind. I don’t play well with others when they get between me and what I want.”

“Yeah,” said Bunny, “I feel you.”

“Even so,” Skip said, “it reduced our operational efficiency by one man.”

Top answered that before I could. “No it didn’t. Hanley was a loudmouth and a showboat. He got mad and focused his anger on the cap’n as if he was the problem at hand. A man thinking with his heart ’stead of his head has stepped out of training. He’d get us all killed.”

“Yeah,” Bunny agreed, “the mission always comes first. Don’t they teach you that in the navy?”

Skip shot him the finger, but he was grinning.

The DMS Warehouse, Baltimore / 3:44 P.M.

THE FOUR OF them went to change out of civvies into the nondescript black BDUs that one of Church’s people supplied—correct sizes, too, even for Bunny. I was about to head off to the bathroom to swap out of my clothes when I saw Rudy standing by the row of chairs, an armed guard by his side. I walked over to Rudy and we shook hands, then gave each other a tight hug. I looked at the guard. “Step off.”

He moved exactly six feet away and stared a hole through the middle distance.

I punched Rudy lightly on the shoulder. “You okay, man?”

“Little scared, Joe, but okay.” He glanced covertly at the guard and lowered his voice. “I’ve spent the last few minutes talking to your Mr. Church. He’s…” He fished for an adjective that probably didn’t exist.

“Yeah, he is.”

“So, you’re Captain Ledger now. Impressive.”

“Ridiculous, too.”

He lowered his voice another notch. “Church took me on a quick tour. This is not some fly-by-night operation. This is millions of taxpayer dollars here.”

“Mm. I still don’t know anything about how it runs. I’ve only seen two commanding officers—Church and this woman, Major Grace Courtland. Have you met her?”

Rudy brightened. “Oh yes. She’s very interesting.”

“Is that the shrink talking or the wolf in shrink’s clothing?”

“A little of both. If I was crass I’d make a joke about wanting to get her on my couch.”

“But of course you’re not crass.”

“Of course not.” He looked around the room. “How do you feel about all this?”

“Borderline freaked. You?”

“Oh, I’m well over the border into total freakout. Luckily I have years of practice at a professional appearance of calm tranquility. Inside I’m a mess.”

“Really?”

“Really.” His smile looked frozen into place. “Church told me about St. Michael’s and about that village in Afghanistan.”

I nodded, and for a moment I had this weird feeling that we were standing there surrounded by ghosts.

“And now you’re working for them,” Rudy said.

“Working for them maybe isn’t the right way to say it. It’s more like we’re both working against the same enemy.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

“Something like that.”

“Church said that you might be leading a small team against these terrorists. Why not send the entire army, navy, and marine corps all at once?”

I shook my head. “The more feet on the ground the bigger the risk of uncontrollable contamination. A small team wouldn’t get in each other’s way; there would be fewer instances where a soldier would be faced with the choice of whether to shoot an infected comrade. It simplifies things. And… if worse comes to worst and the infection has to be contained like it was at St. Michael’s then there are fewer overall losses of assets.”

“‘Assets’?” Rudy echoed.

“People.”

“ Dios mio. How do you know all this?”

“It’s just common sense,” I said.

“No,” he said, “it’s not. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Most people wouldn’t.”

“A fighter would.”

“You mean a warrior,” said Rudy.

I nodded.

Rudy gave me a strange look. Behind him my four team members came filing in dressed in black BDUs. Rudy turned and watched as they walked over to the training area. “They look like tough men.”

“They are.”

He turned back to me. “I hope they’re not so tough that they’re hardened, Joe. We’re not just fighting against something… we’re fighting for something, and it would be a shame to destroy the very thing you’re fighting to preserve.”

“I know.”

“I hope you do.” He looked at his watch. “I’d better go. Mr. Church is going to introduce me to the research teams. I think he’s trying to recruit me, too.”

“Ha! That’ll be the day.”

But Rudy gave me a funny look before he turned and headed back into the offices with the guard a half step behind him, rifle at port arms. I watched them until they passed through the far doorway.

“Shit,” I murmured. I walked over to the team and had just opened my mouth to explain the first drill I wanted them to do, but I never got the chance as behind us a door banged open and Sergeant Gus Dietrich came pelting into the room.

“Captain Ledger! Mr. Church wants you immediately.”

“For what?” I asked as Dietrich skidded to a halt.

Dietrich hesitated for a fraction of a second, the new chain of command probably still uncertain in his head. He made his decision quickly, though. “Surveillance teams found the missing truck. We think we found the third cell.”

“Where?”

“Delaware. He wants you to hit it.”

“When?”

“Now,” said a voice, and I wheeled to see Church and Major Courtland striding across the floor. “Training time’s over,” he said. “Echo Team is wheels up in thirty.”

Claymont, Delaware / Tuesday, June 30; 6:18 P.M.

FOUR HOURS AGO I was buying coffee for Rudy at a Starbucks near the Baltimore aquarium and now I was ankle deep in shit and sewer water in a tunnel under Claymont, Delaware. Life just gets better and better. I was even wearing my street shoes, too. Once we’d gotten the go order there was no time to find boots my size or change into fatigue pants.

We all wore Kevlar chest protectors, limb pads, gun belts, and tactical helmets and night-vision goggles. We had enough weapons to start a small war, which was pretty much the plan.

We’d taken a chopper from Baltimore and offloaded in the parking lot of an abandoned elementary school near Route 13 near Bellevue State Park. Not a lot of foot traffic out that way. From there we’d piled into the back of a fake UPS van borrowed from the local vice squad’s surveillance team and they drove us around behind a liquor warehouse up the street from Selby’s Fine Meats. We used the warehouse’s cellar to access the storm drains and from there into the main sewer line that was supposed to have a vent in the meatpacking plant. My handheld GPS tracker pointed the way.

Ollie Brown was on point and I liked the smooth way he moved, making very little noise despite the water; he checked his corners and kept his eyes pointing in the same direction as his gun sights. The big guy, Bunny, was our cover man, tailing us with a M1014 combat shotgun that looked like a toy in his hands, and in the bad light he looked like a hulking cave troll as he walked bent over, filling the tunnel. I was second in the string, with Top Sims and Skip Tyler behind me. I didn’t have a silencer for my .45 so Sergeant Dietrich had loaned me a Beretta M9 with a Trinity sound suppressor and four extra magazines. I didn’t have a long gun, though everyone else did; handguns were always my thing.