Jonathan Maberry - Patient Zero

“What have we found so far?” Grace asked.

Hu answered that. “Tons. If the data is supported by the lab work my guys are doing right now then we might have a name for some or all of the component parasites. That’s going to save us a lot of time in putting together a protocol.”

I thanked the forensics experts and let them get back to work, though Jerry stayed behind.

Church said, “We haven’t actually heard from you yet, Detective Spencer. What are your thoughts on this?”

Jerry smiled and gave me a sly look. “Captain Hotshot here already knows what I’m thinking, but let me give it to those of you who aren’t cops.” It was a nice dig at the feds in the room. I did my best not to smirk. “Point one,” he said, ticking the items off on his fingers, “this place is built to be a rat maze. The only viable entry point was the door Joe’s team used. From an approach point of view nothing else was moderately safe. I believe that these suckers planned it that way. Point two: once Joe and his boys were inside they were offered a single route to follow. Anyone who’s in this business would know that they’d leave a man behind to guard the door. There was only one possible position a shooter would take to defend that position and right behind him there was a hidden door on well-oiled hinges. Absolutely silent when it opened, allowing an ambush man to sneak up and Taser young whatshisname.”

“Skip Tyler,” I supplied.

“Yeah. Tyler. They take him out with a liquid Taser, cart him off and dump him in a room, but they leave his weapons where he can easily find them? Why not just cut his throat or feed him directly to the walkers? There’s only one way that makes sense.” He didn’t elaborate on that point quite yet. “Point three: they take out the second guy.” He snapped his fingers at me.

“Ollie Brown.”

“Right, they Taser Brown and drag him down to their lab. Now, the bad guys know full well that they’ve been infiltrated. So why the drama? Why capture Joe’s guys instead of killing them? There were only three armed DMS agents left, and between the armed guards in the building and a couple hundred walkers they could easily have simply wiped the team out, or taken them hostage to use as bargaining chips. They didn’t try; they didn’t even try to use Brown as a hostage when Joe broke in. They didn’t try to flee. No, it doesn’t add up. This whole thing should have been a massacre or a standoff… and it was neither.”

“It came pretty bloody close,” muttered Grace.

“Don’t get me wrong, Major,” Jerry said. “I’m not saying they were interested in the well-being of your teams. It probably would have worked out equally well for these guys if you’d all died in there.”

“Charming,” Grace said.

“My point is that this was not a matter of them fighting back. Nothing that I’ve seen supports that. Tell me I’m wrong, Joe.”

“You know you’re right, Jerry,” I told him. The others around the table were staring at us and there was a mixture of expressions. Church’s face, as usual, told me nothing; but Grace was nodding, putting the pieces together herself. Rudy had one eyebrow raised the way he did when he was looking in at his own thoughts. Dietrich looked a little puzzled and kept looking to Church as if for instructions. Hu looked skeptical.

“Why would they do that?” Hu asked.

“Because they wanted us to find what we found,” I said.

Hu shook his head. “No… no way. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes it does,” murmured Church. We all looked at him, but he nodded to me. “You have the floor.”

“All of this is a setup,” I said. “Jerry’s absolutely right: they could have taken us out and should have. We had a small team and no intelligence at all about the inside of the building. Once we were inside they shut down the refrigeration units and turned up the heat to activate all of the walkers that had been lying dormant before we got there. So, between the booby trap in the big warehouse room, the walkers released into the halls, and the appearance of the guards who suddenly decided to open up with their AKs, we were herded into the lab. They set explosives in the computer room, but not enough to destroy all of their research, and none of the armed guards in the hall tried to use a keycard to enter the lab. Jerry checked… their keycards had the right code, but they didn’t use them. We were played.”

“To what end?” Rudy asked. “I mean, I can see the shape of it when you lay it out like that, but what’s the point? You’ve managed to kill all of the walkers, all of their scientists and personnel are dead, we have the computers, and we have whatever else can be salvaged from the lab. The way you’re describing it the terrorists have handed us the solution to the threat.”

When I didn’t answer, he added, “Why would they do something like that?”

El Mujahid / Pier 12 / Brooklyn, New York

THE FREIGHTER ALBERT Schweitzer docked at Pier 12 in the shadow of the Queen Elizabeth 2 and was met by a parking lot filled with ambulances, paratransit vehicles, limousines, and cabs. The ambulatory wounded were escorted down the boarding ramp by nurses and orderlies; the more serious cases wheeled in chairs or on gurneys. Sonny Bertucci walked down under his own steam, though he used a cane and looked frail. He was met by two agents from Global Security. They led him to a white van with the name of a private ambulance company stenciled on the doors. The agents got into the back with Bertucci and the driver shut the door, climbed into the cab, and drove out of the parking lot and within half an hour they were on the New Jersey Turnpike heading south.

At the Thomas Edison Rest Stop the van pulled around behind a row of parked semis and stopped next to a black Ford Explorer with Pennsylvania plates. Both drivers got out and shook hands and together they walked around to the back of the white van. The van driver knocked three times, waited, and knocked once more before opening the door.

“Your ride is—”

That was as far as he got. The driver of the Explorer pressed a silenced .22 against the back of his head and fired two quick shots. The van driver collapsed just as the doors opened; Sonny Bertucci reached out and caught him and together he and the Explorer’s driver hauled the corpse into the van, laying it next to the two bodies of the Global Security agents. Both of them had their throats cut, and the big man held the hook of his cane in his left hand. The hook ended in a six-inch wickedly sharp stiletto that had fit into the shaft of the cane, the seam hidden by a decorative metal band.

Bertucci tossed the weapon into the back and together he and the driver of the Explorer closed and locked the van’s doors. When they were done they embraced warmly, slapping each other on the back.

“It is so good to see you!” beamed the driver.

El Mujahid grinned despite the pain of his healing wounds. “Ahmed, it is very good to see a friend in this place.” He paused and jerked his chin toward the van. “Gault knows?”

“So it seems,” said Ahmed. “I received a call about fifteen minutes ago saying that you were to be terminated. I assume one of them,” the driver said, jerking his head toward the closed van, “got a similar call.”

“Yes. It came in while we were driving. I couldn’t hear what was said but I could tell from his eyes that he’d gotten a kill order. Thank you for taking care of things.”

“My pleasure. Come, let us go… we cannot risk being here if Gault has other agents coming.”

Once they were both seated inside the Explorer and pulling back into the flow of traffic, Ahmed asked, “What is the news from home? How is my sister?”