Contagious (7 page)

weren’t,
damn it. I saved you, didn’t I?”
“And what a delightful experience that was.”
“I know it was painful,” she said.
Perry laughed. “Yeah.
Painful.
By the way, you sure your last name isn’t Mengele, not Montoya?”
“Oh, you can just kiss my ass, Perry,” Margaret said. “I saved your life. Amos and I figured out how all by ourselves, because trust me, your disease wasn’t exactly listed in Wikipedia. I know it hurt, but I saved your life—and you compare me to Josef Mengele? How about instead you just say
thank you for saving my life
,
Margaret
.”
“And you said I wasn’t good at pushing buttons.”
It was funny how clearly you could see emotions through one of those visors. Margaret’s eyes narrowed, and her upper lip wrinkled up just a bit. Frickin’ adorable.
“Don’t forget, Doc, I gave you quite a head start,” Perry said. “I didn’t have any triangles when you got to me, remember? And you can look around all you want, but you won’t see any Chicken Scissors laying around. These people didn’t even
try.”
She looked away. Everyone did when he mentioned the scissors. She took a slow breath, then looked at him dead-on again.
“Perry, I learned so much from helping you recover. I can
save
these people. Why do you think Dew is trying so hard to bring them in alive?”
Perry looked at Margaret, looked into her brown eyes. She had saved his life, that was true. Most of the time he wished she hadn’t.
It was so hard to believe there was a person as good as Margaret left in the world. It was also hard to believe there was a person this naive.
“You’re kidding yourself, lady,” Perry said. “You can’t save them.”
“I can, Perry, and I will. We need your help, more than just finding the hosts. You still won’t tell us anything about your experience. Do you know how frustrating it is when the one person who survived won’t tell you the most basic information?”
Perry shook his head. “I don’t talk about that.”
“I’ve noticed,” Margaret said. “Look, everyone understands it’s traumatic. Believe me. You have to overcome this. I know you don’t want to think about what happened with Bill, but—”
“
Don’t
talk about him!” Before the words were even out of his mouth, Perry leaned toward her and banged the table hard with his fist. Margaret flinched, eyes wide in surprise and fear. Clarence’s gun came up, leveled right at Perry’s chest.
Perry quickly leaned back. Goddamit. He’d lost it. Scared Margaret. That was the last thing he wanted to do.
Margaret looked back at Clarence. “Put that damn thing down.”
Clarence lowered the gun.
“My bad,” Perry said.
She put her gloved hand on his forearm. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry to bring up awful memories, but you’ve got to start doing the right thing.”
“The right thing?” He stood and set a fresh beer bottle on the table in front of her. A gift. She wouldn’t drink it, but it’s the thought that counts.
“You’re a smart cupcake, Margo,” Perry said. “But you don’t know the right thing here. Trust me, the right thing is to let me help them.”
“Like you helped these people?”
Perry nodded. “Exactly.”
He started to walk out, then stopped and turned to face her. “And that suit, Margaret. That’s the worst suit I ever saw. You buy a suit like that, I bet you get a free bowl of soup.”
“But it looks good on you,” Margaret said. “
Caddyshack.
I own that one, too.”
Perry smiled and gestured toward Otto, who looked horribly uncomfortable at the whole situation. “Margie, you’re too cool for Mister Funbags over there. Enjoy your new playmates.”
He walked out of the kitchen, hoping that one beer he’d left Margo wasn’t the that would have pushed him over the top.
He needed to sleep. Sleep, without hearing Bill’s voice.
NOTHING IN THIS HAND
Dew waited in his car while Anthony Gitsham and Marcus Thompson connected the two semi trailers to make the MargoMobile fully operational. The two trailers weren’t really trailers, they were flatbeds, each carrying a container that was eight feet wide by ten feet high by forty feet long. As standard-size cargo containers, the things could easily be transported by rail, by ship or even by air with a cargo helicopter. Once combined, the two containers made for a highly portable BSL-4 autopsy facility.
Painted blue and scuffed up a bit to make them look rusty and well used, they didn’t rate a second glance on the highway. But it was only the outsides that looked beat up—the inside areas gleamed with the pristine whiteness of a high-tech hospital.
Three months ago there’d been no such thing as a mobile lab rated for BSL-4. That was as bad as it got—ebola, Marburg, superflu, shit like that. Some company had had the trailer on the drawing board. Margaret found out and insisted it was just the thing for the crazy, secret work of Project Tangram. Dew had agreed. So had Murray, who’d funded the rush job on a prototype and then ordered two more. At a this-week-only sale price of $25 million each.
Fuck it,
Murray had said,
it’s only taxpayers’ money
.
The things you could do with a black budget. When the trailers were delivered and the team checked them out, Amos had called them
the MargoMobile,
and the name just stuck.
Big dollars or no, Dew couldn’t argue with Margaret—the trailer combo was a bargain at any price. The BSL-4 tents Margaret had used at various hospitals worked, but you needed to set them up, you had to deal with a concerned hospital staff, local media, et cetera. The MargoMobile solved that. You could take the full BSL-4 lab right to the bodies and do what had to be done. The thing even had a microwave incinerator, for fuck’s sake—one-stop shopping from body acquisition to disposal.
The two trailers set up in parallel. From the rear, the right trailer, Trailer A, had normal cargo doors. Opening those up revealed two more doors—the cargo doors were just a front. The door on the left led into a small computer center, ten feet long by five feet wide. One thin desktop ran the length of the room. It supported three keyboard-and-mouse combinations that rested in front of three flat-panel monitors mounted on the walls. Add three office chairs and you were in business. Other equipment provided secure encrypted transmission to anyone on the trailer’s frequency or could plug into a full NSA-caliber satellite uplink. Voice, video, data, whatever you needed. The communication equipment was originally meant to provide a secure connection to the CDC or the WHO, but it worked just as well for an old CIA spook.
The right-side door led into a claustrophobic, three-foot-wide airlock that ran ten feet into the trailer before it reached a second airtight door. That door opened into the eight-by-ten-foot decontamination center. In there, dozens of nozzles shot out a high-pressure combination of chlorine gas and concentrated liquid bleach. Lethal to anything from a microbe to a man. Once you got through decon, a final airtight door let into the main area: an eight-foot-wide, twenty-foot-long autopsy room. An area about the size of a typical living room to deal with the deadliest pathogens the world had to offer.
The left-hand trailer, Trailer B, held a narrow dressing room with lockers for the hazmat suits and gear. That room wasn’t part of the airtight area—you had to walk into the dressing room, get suited up, then walk back outside and go through the Trailer A airlock to reach the autopsy room. Trailer B also held air compressors, refrigeration units, filters, generators, a nine-slot cadaver rack like you’d find in any morgue, and a clear-walled containment chamber designed for living hosts. That cell held two autopsy trolleys, side by side, with just enough room between them for someone to walk in, turn around and walk out. If they did have to use this cell, the host (or hosts) would likely be strapped down to the trolley: safety and secrecy, not comfort, were the rules of the day.
A collapsible covered walkway extended from Trailer B and connected directly into the autopsy room of Trailer A. That way they only needed one decontamination area to access the airtight areas of both trailers. Gitsh and Marcus were in the process of connecting the accordion-like walkway.
Dew liked those guys. Marcus was the kind you’d want by your side in a firefight. Gitsh not so much, but he always had a smile and a laugh, and on a long, isolated assignment that was just as important as being able to shoot straight. Dew checked his watch—the connection process usually took them ten minutes. Now it was eleven and counting. He’d give them some shit about that later.
Gitsh opened the door to the computer center. Dew got out of his Lincoln, braving the rain once more to dart inside. He sat down at one of the computers, typed in his user name and password, then spread out the blood-smeared map on top of the keyboard. He grabbed the secure phone and punched in a memorized number. He still found it odd that he could dial Colonel Charlie Ogden in the middle of a field engagement and get him every time. The wonders of a high-tech army.
“Company X, this is Corporal Cope.”
“Dew Phillips. Get me Ogden.”
“Right away, sir.”
Dew waited. He held the phone with his right hand while the fingertips of his left traced an as-the-crow-flies line from South Bloomingville, Ohio, to Glidden, Wisconsin. About six hundred miles. Project Tangram had several V-22 Ospreys at their disposal. The Ospreys were perfect for their needs. They could take off and land anywhere, no runway required, courtesy of a helicopter engine on each wing. Once in the air, those engines slowly tilted forward, and the helicopter became a twin-turboprop plane. Seeing as each Osprey could carry up to twenty-four soldiers and do about three hundred miles an hour, they were invaluable for moving Ogden’s troops from Point A to Point B. In a real logistical pinch, the Ospreys could even haul the MargoMobile trailers, one trailer per bird.
“Ogden here,” said the familiar voice. “What have you got for me?”
“You first,” Dew said. “Did you take out the construct?”
“Would I be talking to you if I hadn’t?”
Dew shook his head. Charlie Ogden wasn’t much for pleasantries.
“We’ve got something else,” Dew said. “Punch in Marinesco, Michigan, on whatever fancy map computer you’ve got there.”
Ogden barked an order to his staff.
“Got it,” Ogden said.
“We found another construct there.”
There was a brief pause. “Okay, things make more sense now.”
“How long till you can be there, Charlie?”
“We’ve got our Ospreys close by. With midair refueling . . . maybe two and a half hours.”
“What about the two companies still at Fort Bragg?”
“I can send them now, but they don’t have Ospreys and they’re too far away for helicopters. We could get them on C-17s and drop them right in near the zone. Say thirty minutes to get wheels up, ninety minutes to fly and jump, fifteen minutes for them to gather and move in. Either way we’re looking at two and a half hours best case, three hours more likely. You got pictures of this thing?”
“We’re bringing satellites online now,” Dew said. “We should have something any moment. I told the squints to send you pictures as soon as we get them.”
“Understood. Listen, I think South Bloomingville was a feint. Designed to draw our attention while they set up at Marinesco.”
“What are you saying, Charlie?” Dew asked. “These little bastards are using high-level tactics?”
“They didn’t defend themselves. When we closed in, they destroyed the construct, killing themselves in the process. And I think it was a prop.”
“A
prop
?”
“Yeah, like fake planes on a fake airstrip designed to fool satellite intel. It heated up like the other gates, but it was thinner. Just enough material to have the right shape and the right behaviors, not enough to be functional.”
Dew felt a helpless feeling spreading through his guts. “So if this Marinesco gate is already hot,” Dew said, “if you can’t get there in time, then what?”
Ogden’s voice dropped a little as he spoke to someone near him. “Cope, order the FAC to this location.”
Dew heard a distant “Yes sir.”
“Charlie,” Dew said, “what the fuck are you doing?”
“I just deployed the FAC, the forward air controller. It’s an F-22 Raptor fighter, fast as hell. It will acquire the target and transmit coordinates to the Strike Eagle squadron.”
“The F-15s? You’re dropping fucking two-thousand-pound bombs on it? It’s
Michigan,
not fucking Fallujah, Charlie. Why can’t we use the Apaches like we did in Wahjamega and Mather?”
“Depends on if we can get them there in time,” Ogden said. “If I send the Apaches now, it’s a two-hour straight flight. The Eagles do Mach 2.5—they’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.”
Dew’s cell phone buzzed—he checked it to find a text message that was nothing but a sixteen-character code.
“I’ve got sat pictures, Charlie.”
“We just got them, too. Cope, up on the screen.”
Dew shoved the map aside and carefully typed in the code. A series of thumbnail images appeared, some in color, some in black and white. Dew clicked on the first black-and-white image, blowing it up to fill the screen. Most of the picture showed the black, irregular patterns of dense trees. The center of the image, however, showed a fuzzy white symbol that had come to represent the unknown terror of the infection.
White meant that the gate was already hot.
“I’m ordering a full strike,” Ogden said. “Taking that damn thing out of the game.”
“Hold on, Charlie,” Dew said. “The area
looks
pretty unpopulated, but we don’t have any intel on the residents. Can we get some planes to make a pass? See if any people are around?”
“Phillips, I don’t give a fuck if the gate is built right on top of a compound full of orphans and nuns. I’m taking it out.”
“Charlie, come on. You’re talking about two-thousand-pound bombs on U. S. soil. We have to get approval from Murray on this.”
“No we don’t,” Ogden said. “I have authority from the president to make any necessary battlefield decisions up to Option Number Four. That one has to come from the big man himself. Other than that, it’s my call.”
“But that order was from President Hutchins. Gutierrez probably doesn’t even know about it.”
“I have my orders,” Ogden said. “We have to strike immediately, and with force. Nice work uncovering this location, Dew. All I can say is thank God we’ve got Dawsey. He’s the only thing keeping us in this game. Ogden out.”
Charlie broke the connection.
Dew put the handset back in its cradle.