Jonathan Maberry: Patient Zero

Much of the technical information in this novel is based upon actual science. With very few exceptions, the surveillance equipment, computer systems, and weapons used by the fictional Department of Military Sciences are real, though several of these items are not yet available on the commercial market.

Prion diseases, including fatal familial insomnia, are also real; the parasites and control diseases used by Gen2000, however, are purely fictitious, though inspired by similar pathogens currently present in science.

A great number of people have provided help, advice, and technical information. Any technical errors still remaining are mine. Also, thanks to Michael Sicilia of Homeland Security; the superb team at the Philadelphia Forensic Science Bureau led by Chief Inspector Keith R. Sadler and Captain Daniel Castro; Ken Coluzzi, Chief of Lower Makefield Police Department; Frank Sessa; Dr. Bruno Vincent of the Institut de Pharmacologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire; Kenneth Storey, Ph.D., Carleton University; Pawel P. Liberski, M.D., Department of Molecular Pathology and Neuropathology, Medical University of Lodz; and Peter Lukacs, M.D.

WHEN YOU HAVE to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world.

And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.

Ocean City, Maryland / Saturday, June 27; 10:22 A.M.

THEY CAME FOR me at the beach. Nice and slick, two in front, one big cover man behind in a three-point close while I was reaching for my car door. Nothing flashy, just three big guys in off-the-rack gray, all of them sweating in the Ocean City heat.

The point man held up his hands in a no-problem gesture. It was a hot Saturday morning and I was in swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt with mermaids on it over a Tom Petty T-shirt. Flip-flops and Wayfarers. My piece was in a locked toolbox in the trunk, with a trigger guard clamped on it. I was at the beach to look at this year’s crop of sunbunnies and I’d been off the clock since the shooting pending a Monday-morning officer-involved discussion with the OIS team. It had been a bad scene at the warehouse and they’d put me on administrative leave to give me time to get my head straight about the shootings. I wasn’t expecting trouble, there shouldn’t have been trouble, and the smooth way these guys boxed me was designed to keep everyone’s emotions in neutral. I couldn’t have done it better myself.

“Mr. Ledger…?”

“Detective Ledger,” I said to be pissy.

No trace of a smile on the point guy’s face, only a millimeter of a nod. He had a head like a bucket.

“We’d like you to come with us,” he said.

“Badge me or buzz off.”

Buckethead gave me the look, but he pulled out an FBI identification case and held it up. I stopped reading after the initials.

“What’s this about?”

“Would you come with us, please?”

“I’m off the clock, guys, what’s this about?”

No answer.

“Are you aware that I’m scheduled to start at Quantico in three weeks?”

No answer.

“You want me to follow you in my car?” Not that I wanted to try and give these fellows the slip, but my cell was in the glove box of the SUV and it would be nice to check in with the lieutenant on this one. It had a weird feel to it. Not exactly threatening, just weird.

“No, sir, we’ll bring you back here after.”

“After what?”

No answer.

I looked at him and then the guy next to him. I could feel the cover man behind me. They were big, they were nicely set—even with peripheral vision I could see that Buckethead had his weight on the balls of his feet and evenly balanced. The other front man was shifted to his right. He had big knuckles but his hands weren’t scarred. Probably boxing rather than martial arts; boxers wear gloves.

They were doing almost everything right except that they were a little too close to me. You should never get that close.

But they looked like the real deal. It’s hard to fake the FBI look.

“Okay,” I said.

Ocean City, Maryland / Saturday, June 27; 10:31 A.M.

BUCKETHEAD SAT BESIDE me in the back and the other two sat up front, the cover man driving the big government Crown Vic. For all the conversation going on the others might have been mimes. The air conditioner was turned up and the radio was turned off. Exciting.

“I hope we’re not going all the way the hell back to Baltimore.” That was more than a three-hour ride and I had sand in my shorts.

“No.” That was the only word Buckethead said on the ride. I settled back to wait.

I could tell that he was a leftie from the bulge his shoulder rig made. He kept me on his right side, which meant that his coat flap would impede me grabbing his piece and he could use his right hand as a block to fend me off while he drew. It was professional and well thought out. I’d have done almost the same thing. What I wouldn’t have done, though, was hold on to the leather handstrap by the door like he was doing. It was the second small mistake he made and I had to wonder if he was testing me or whether there was a little gap between his training and his instincts.

I settled back and tried to understand this pickup. If this had something to do with the action last week on the docks, if I was somehow in trouble for something related to that, then I sure as hell planned to lawyer up when we got wherever we were going. And I wanted a union rep there, too. No way this was SOP. Unless it was some Homeland thing, in which case I’d lawyer up and call my congressman. That warehouse thing was righteous and I wasn’t going to let anyone say different.

For the last eighteen months I’d been attached to one of those interjurisdictional task forces that have popped up everywhere post 9/11. A few of us from Baltimore PD, some Philly and D.C. guys, and a mixed bag of Feds: FBI, NSA, ATF, and a few letter combinations I hadn’t seen before. Nobody really doing much but everyone wanting a finger in the pie in case something juicy happened, and by juicy I mean career beneficial.

I kind of got drafted into it. Ever since I’d gotten my gold shield a few years ago I’d been lucky enough to close a higher-than-average number of cases, including two that had loose ties to suspected terrorist organizations. I also had four years in the army and I know a little bit of Arabic and some Farsi. I know a little bit of a lot of languages. Languages were easy for me, and that made me a first-round draft pick for the surveillance van. Most of the people we wiretapped jumped back and forth between English and a variety of Middle Eastern languages.

The task force seemed like it would be pretty cool but the reality of it was that they put me on wiretap in a van and for most of the last year and a half I drank too much Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and felt my ass grow flat.

Supposedly a group of suspected low-level terrorists with tenuous links to fundamentalist Shias were planning on smuggling something in that we were told was a potential bioweapon. No details provided, of course, which makes surveillance a bitch and largely a waste of time. When we (meaning us cops) tried to ask them (meaning the big shots from Homeland) what we were looking for, we were stonewalled. Need-to-know basis. That sort of thing tells you everything about why we’re not all that safe. Truth is that if they tell us then we might play too significant a role in the arrest, which means they get less credit. It’s what got us into trouble with 9/11, and as far as I can tell it really hasn’t gotten much better since.