A Heartbeat Away Read online

  The airlock met Griff’s standards for safety, but only for a Level 3 or less microbe. Neoprene cell foam gaskets sealed the frame-to-frame connections. Ceiling-mounted HEPA air filters produced the optimum negative pressure airspace. There were three portable chemical showers inside the airlock chamber itself, which they would use to decontaminate before they could exit.

  The rudimentary structure, designed to allow entry into the Capitol with the minimal risk of viral escape, was not up to the safety standards of a BSL-4 containment facility. But despite his reservations, Griff knew the setup was better than nothing and best for these circumstances.

  Once inside the airlock, he used the gauge he had requested to measure microns of airborne contaminate. As soon as he got three satisfactory readings, he pulled open the door sealing the airlock from the tunnel. On the way out, each of them would be required to take a twenty-minute chemical shower, following which Griff would measure the air quality again. Three more safe readings and he would risk opening the airlock door for them to exit.

  Simple enough.

  “The visitor center entrance to the Capitol should be unlocked,” Sergeant Stafford yelled. Griff could barely hear over the noise of the ceiling-mounted air purifiers lining the tunnel walkway. “You’ll be met by the president’s personal physician and escorted to President Allaire by his Secret Service people.”

  “Roger that,” one solider replied.

  The team entered in single file. No one spoke as they passed through the visitor center door. Once inside the Capitol, Griff paused, adjusting his senses to the new environment. All was silent.

  Deadly silent.

  After a delay of two minutes, a team of four agents appeared—two men and two women. Their expressions suggested they hadn’t been briefed to expect the biocontainment suits. Or maybe it was Griff’s Unibomber appearance.

  “Where’s the doctor?” Sergeant Stafford asked.

  “Detained. People are starting to get sick. We’ve got medicine and supplies coming in by tram to the House subway station.”

  Griff turned to the agent.

  “I’ll need access to those tunnels so I can sample the atmosphere. We might have to seal them off. We have no idea about their air flow patterns.”

  “What is this virus?” an agent said.

  “Nothing good,” Griff answered.

  The agents introduced themselves, but Griff paid no attention to their names. Instead he studied them for signs of strain. Then he asked to check their hands. Chen’s test animals had reportedly developed bizarre patterns of redness on their palms as their infections intensified—crimson swirls or concentric, targetlike lesions. Of the four agents, only one of the men, tall and angular, had a slightly increased respiratory rate. He could have been hyperventilating because of the tenseness of their situation, or he could have been incubating virus.

  It had been just over ten hours since the initial exposure.

  “Why are you wearing jackets?” Griff asked. “It’s hot inside these suits and we have fans going. You guys must be baking.”

  “We’re wearing shoulder holsters,” one of the women said. “The people in there are upset enough without having obviously armed guards parading about.”

  “What’s the room temperature?”

  “No idea, but it’s up there. We just got the AC running again. It already shut down on us once. We’re trying to keep the House Chamber and other rooms cool. Body heat wants to turn the place into a sauna.”

  “Well, radio somebody right now and tell them to shut that AC off. It’s bad enough there are openings around every window in this creaky old place. We’re talking viruses here, as in small—unimaginably small for most people. And like I said, we don’t know about airflow or how the germ will spread. Let’s not help it along through the ventilation shafts.”

  The Secret Service agent sent the order on via radio, and the biocontainment team and their guides resumed their descent into hell. They crossed a polished marble floor and then headed down a short flight of stairs into Emancipation Hall. From there, they passed the model of the Statue of Freedom and up some stairs before emerging into the Great Rotunda. Griff took little notice of the splendor of the dome, lined by cream- and gold-colored toruses, with the Brumidi frieze and stunning fresco at its top. The way things were, the Great Rotunda, and the rest of the Capitol for that matter, had become nothing more than an ornate coffin.

  They crossed under the dome in silence, but from up ahead, Griff heard voices. The clamor grew louder as the team approached Statuary Hall.

  “Isn’t everybody still inside the House Chamber?” he asked, visualizing the floor plans he had studied on the way across country.

  “We’ve moved some people. President’s orders.”

  “Varied exposure levels?”

  “No one’s told us. They just said who to move and where.”

  Griff’s containment suit was sweltering, but still, the scene in elegant Statuary Hall sent a chill through him. Entering between Washington and Jefferson, the team stepped into a large, two-story semicircular space, crowded with people. Many of them were lying on blankets, spread out across the richly polished checkered floor. Others were propped against the pedestals displaying the busts of heroes from each of the states.

  In a bizarre, unsettling juxtaposition, those comprising the miserably uncomfortable assemblage were decked in their finest evening wear, much of which had been ripped in response to the heat. A Civil War infirmary scene was Griff’s first impression—minus the bloodied bandages and hand-carved crutches.

  Portable lighting augmenting that from the chandelier bathed the scene in an eerie glow.

  There were several cots set up in a row along one wall, bearing mostly older men and women with IV drips in their arms. Near them were several large trash cans, filled to overflowing with rubbish, and beside the cans were columns of cartons, stacked five high, with stenciled lettering on the side that read: US ARMY RATIONS.

  The voices fell into a deathly silence as Griff and the others made their way into the room. A number of the detainees, haggard, shirts open, hair undone, slowly rose to their feet and followed Griff’s movements with their eyes. Then, without warning, a small, frustrated mob, ten or twelve, with madness in their eyes, rushed him. Some clawed at his suit. Others tried getting at his mask.

  “What’s going on?” a woman shouted. “Tell us!”

  “Help us! Please!”

  “Who are you?”

  “For God’s sake, do something! Get us out of here!”

  The violent reaction was totally unexpected. One break in his suit, one microscopic tear in the seal between his mask and hood, and he was dead. Griff batted away at their arms. The soldiers and Secret Service agents, also taken by surprise, delayed several seconds before finally wading into the crowd, shoving some people aside and others to the floor. The agents pulled their sidearms and two of the soldiers swung the barrels of their M16s, gashing open a distinguished-looking gentleman’s face. A woman came at Griff from the side. Her hair was matted down with sweat and her makeup had run rivers along both cheeks.

  “Please,” the women begged, “I have a son. A husband. If it’s just a flu virus, why can’t we leave?”

  “Flu?” Griff repeated. “Is that what you were told?”

  “Yes.”

  Griff clenched his jaw and pushed his way past the woman, being led and followed closely by those assigned to protect him.

  “Wait,” one of the soldiers behind Griff said.

  The group turned. He was an African American, with the broad shoulders and narrow waist of a serious weight lifter. Now, the soldier stood motionless, holding his right arm out. The tape safeguarding his wrist had been torn away, and the weld between the hand and arm was ripped, exposing his skin.

  “I’m sorry,” Griff whispered, placing his arm around the shoulders of the man who had quite possibly saved Griff’s life at the cost of his own. “I’m really sorry.”

  Without a
word, the soldier set his rifle down, placed his helmet beside it, turned, and head high, walked back into Statuary Hall.

  For a time, no one could speak.

  “Let’s hope you’re worth it, pal,” one of the other men said finally. “Let’s hope you’re worth it.”

  The group was led down a hallway to a nondescript door just outside the House Chamber.

  “The president is waiting for you inside,” an agent said.

  Griff inhaled deeply, then exhaled and opened the door. From his seat at the desk inside the small office, James Allaire rose. For a time, the two men stood several feet apart, sizing each other up.

  “You’re lying to these people.”

  “I’m the goddamn president of this country. I do what I feel is necessary to maintain order and protect the citizens. I’m counting on you to save their lives.”

  “You were wrong about me. You know that? I’m not a terrorist.”

  “Well then, prove it.”

  CHAPTER 17

  DAY 2

  8:00 A.M. (EST)

  The exterior of the S&S Trading Co. mirrored the other garages and rundown brick warehouses lining a quarter-mile stretch of K Street in southeast D.C. Reports of decreased violence in the notoriously high-crime neighborhood amounted to little more than the city’s well-connected Economic Council responding to a steady inflow of landlord payoffs. Homicides were up, prostitution was up, and tax revenues were down. Agitation was increasing to clean up the area in preparation for gentrification, and sooner or later there would be a big-time crackdown.

  But not that night.

  With every cop in D.C. summoned to the Capitol, patrols were essentially nonexistent, and the street people were out in force. Teenage drug dealers and over-the-hill hookers strolled past the S&S Trading Co. without giving the building a second thought. From the street, they could not see the sophisticated array of satellite dishes set dead center on the roof. Beyond the massive steel sliding door, painted a nondescript reddish brown, two men sat at opposite sides of a folding table, smoking cigars, drinking coffee, and playing cards. The men, one African American, the other Caucasian, were dressed in military fatigues.

  A naked bulb dangled from a cord suspended a few feet above them. Smoke drifted through the shaft of light. Seated to one side of the dimly lit space was a third man, copper-skinned and wiry, with a once-handsome face that was marred by a spectacular scar running from his forehead through his brow and down his right cheek. He was paying no attention to the others. Instead, wearing headphones, he was fixed on a wall-mounted bank of a dozen video monitors.

  The images on each of the screens automatically changed every three minutes, along with the sound associated with it. A joystick enabled the man to adjust the angle and distance of the views projected by the concealed cameras, positioned throughout the United States Capitol building. There were several of them he could zoom in close enough to read the number plates on the seats in the House Chamber, and he could rotate another pair 360 degrees to observe the chaos unfolding in Statuary Hall.

  There was room for a second operator at the bank of screens, but at the moment one man was handling them by himself.

  Suddenly a speaker, mounted on the wall just above the monitor bank, crackled to life, disrupting the quiet, and actually startling the man, whose name was Alex Ramirez. Ramirez, an electronics expert who had soldiered in a dozen or more wars around the globe, glanced up at the cameras he had installed—cameras that were now monitoring him and the others in the S&S Trading Company.

  “I don’t pay you goof-offs to play cards,” a disembodied male voice boomed out. “Get back in the garage and work on the equipment. Ramirez, where’s Fink?”

  The other men stopped playing cards and redirected their attention toward the monitors on which they were featured.

  “Fink’s catching some Z’s in the back room,” Ramirez said.

  “Well, wake him up,” the voice barked.

  Ramirez swiveled his chair around.

  “Hey, goof-offs, on your way back to the garage, can one of you guys go and wake up Fink. Tell him it’s Cain.”

  Ramirez had recognized Cain’s voice.

  “If you men follow orders,” he had said that first day, “you’ll be rewarded to the degree that Matt Fink discussed with each of you. If you question our patriotism or refuse to follow any directives, you will be permanently and painfully retired from this unit and from your life.”

  The wall-mounted speakers became active again.

  “Ramirez, take manual control of camera nine and queue it up for Fink,” Cain said. “I want him to see what’s going on.”

  The man spoke with the confident authority Ramirez had grown accustomed to obeying over his years in various armies.

  Cain, Genesis—cute. As always, Ramirez chuckled at the notion of how his Bible-toting, God-obsessed mother, had she lived past fifty, would have taken to his working for people who based their operation on the scriptures, and in particular on Genesis, her favorite book of the Old Testament.

  Poor, deluded old gal.

  Through a number of missions together, Ramirez had developed complete trust in his friend Matt Fink. First, though, he had to survive nearly having his throat slit for making a casual remark about the mercenary’s name.

  “It was my father’s name and his father’s name before him,” Fink had said, holding Ramirez a foot off the floor with one hand, and brandishing his huge knife with the other. “The first man I killed thought it was a good idea to make fun of it.”

  Initially, Ramirez had doubts about this particular job. For a time after signing on with Genesis, he kept those doubts to himself. Then the first payment hit his Swiss bank account and his apprehension vanished like the darkness of the first day. As long as those payouts continued, he decided, he would gladly light a frigging candle on his knees if that’s what Genesis wanted.

  How’s that, Mama?

  Matt Fink’s heavy footsteps echoed in the spacious, high-ceilinged warehouse as he strode over to where Ramirez sat. Fink always slept lightly, and never far away from a weapon—most often his bowie knife or his Luger, and at other times, both. The men liked to joke that sometime, during a nightmare, the giant would shoot himself and slit his own throat. By the time Fink reached the screens, he was wide awake and fully alert. He waved up at the camera.

  “Hey, there, Cain, old sport. What’s up?”

  “Are you aware of what’s happening at the Capitol?”

  “There have been no reports of any incidents that jeopardize our mission.”

  “Ramirez, zoom camera nine in on the group in the biosuits. They entered the building a little while ago.”

  Ramirez pressed a button on his control panel. The monitor labeled CAMERA NUMBER NINE flickered as the image auto-focused on the targets. The recording showed seven individuals dressed in biocontainment gear making their way like lunar explorers across the polished marble floor.

  “They’re military,” Fink said. “We expected this would happen. It does nothing to compromise our efforts.”

  “Six of them are soldiers,” Cain replied, “but who in the hell is the one with the beard?”

  Fink peered at the screen, then leaned forward and took over control of the camera himself.

  “Let me get a decent close-up of him,” Fink said.

  “Don’t move that apparatus too much. I don’t want them to know they’re being watched until it’s time.”

  “Anything you say, sport.”

  “And stop calling me sport.”

  “I’m from bleedin’ South Africa. We’d call the Pope sport.”

  “And while you’re working on that,” Cain said, “can you guys explain to me how we lost visual of the president for over forty-five minutes?”

  “There must be a dead space where our cameras can’t pick him up,” Ramirez offered.

  “Impossible,” Cain shot back. “We had every inch of that building covered. Someone screwed up.”

 
“Couldn’t have been you,” Ramirez muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, boss. Sorry if we missed something.”

  “Good. Now, get me a shot through the visor of the guy with the beard.”

  Fink continued to maneuver and position the camera until the bearded man’s weary face came into better focus.

  “Good. Very good,” Cain said. “We can use facial recognition software to find out who he is. If we need to, we can even remove the beard. Fink, we’ll provide you with a detailed background on this man after we get a match. I have a feeling I already know.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” Fink said.

  “Meanwhile, I want you to get over there and mill around with the crowd. Bring two men with you. Ramirez will keep an eye on Mr. Beard—or maybe I should say Dr. Beard—and we’ll be in touch when we know something for certain.”

  “You’ve got it sp— Mr. Cain, sir.”

  “They’re wearing portable breathing systems that are battery powered. Sooner or later he’s going to have to come out.”

  “Count on us to be there when he does,” Fink said.

  CHAPTER 18

  DAY 2

  8:15 A.M. (EST)

  “Okay. The way I understand it, if I do my best to find a way to beat this bug, I’m free, whether I succeed or not. No strings.”

  “That’s the deal,” the president said.

  “Even though you still believe I stole that virus from my own lab.”

  “The security cameras picked up several perfect shots of your face behind your visor. Particles from the floor of the deepest level of the lab were on your boots, and we found the canisters hidden in a recently constructed compartment behind your basement wall. The gym bag you used to transport the canisters was found in your bedroom closet.”

  “It wasn’t me.”