Darkness at Dawn (5 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Jennings
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Fiction
If she was in government employ—and she had to be to be here—she’d just committed insubordination.
Mike half expected Montgomery to call in the two mean-looking Marines stationed right outside the door and have her marched out under armed guard.
But then Mike got the second half of the double whammy. Because Edwin Montgomery, who was known to eat newbies for breakfast, merely turned to her with a gentle smile. “Oh yes, my dear.”
Hot Babe—Lucy Merritt—crossed slender arms over utterly delightful breasts and sat back, face cold. She didn’t have the mulish expression you’d expect of someone crossing a major line. She just looked determined. Despite himself, Mike was a little impressed. Edwin Montgomery was a legend in government. Presidents quailed before him. That a young woman defied him was almost unthinkable.
Montgomery turned to the other people in the room, all of them frozen, mesmerized by the little drama playing out. His glare unfroze them, fast. Inside a minute, the room was deserted except for Mike, Montgomery, Dr. Samuels and Dr. Lucy Merritt.
“Dr. Samuels.” Montgomery’s face had turned grim again, deep brackets around his mouth, nostrils white with tension. “What else can you tell us, positing a weaponized HFV, based on what we’ve seen?”
There were now only the four of them in the room. Montgomery had touched a button that switched the screen off and raised the lights. He and Lucy Merritt were sitting together on one side of the enormous table and Mike and Dr. Samuels were on the opposite side, a few chairs apart. Mike swiveled in his chair to see Dr. Samuels better.
Dr. Samuels was looking as grim as Montgomery was. “Well, there are a lot of considerations to be made. First of all, whatever lab mutation has occurred, I’m assuming that the incubation period has been shortened.”
Montgomery nodded. “To a couple of hours, as best we can reconstruct.”
Dr. Samuels winced. “Okay. If the virus has been mutated to be faster and even more deadly, that’s horrible news. In an unaltered form the mortality rate is 89 percent, as I said. So any tweaking would bring it close to a 100 percent mortality rate, which more or less rules out any hospital or medical care at all, as the medical staff will be infected as well. The disease will run its course until everyone is dead. And of course they’d have worked on the medium of contagion. Airborne, you said. So it could be spread by people, by canisters loosed by airplanes, crop dusters . . . you name it. But horrible as all that is, there’s another aspect that’s terrifying. Unless you’re a complete maniac—and though, unfortunately, there are plenty of those around, luckily they tend to be scarce in the scientific community—you don’t create a Doomsday Disease that can’t be contained. Because you can’t be assured the disease won’t decimate your own population. It’s a little like Cold War MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction. No one wanted to risk it. They’d created something so horrible it was guaranteed to come back to bite them in the ass if unleashed.
However . . .
” He shot an index finger at the monitor. “Can we see that last bit again? The one where it looks like the man disappeared? That’s it. Now please fast forward.”
However . . .
” He shot an index finger at the monitor. “Can we see that last bit again? The one where it looks like the man disappeared? That’s it. Now please fast forward.”
The monitor sprang to life, the images crisp and crystal clear. The man lay facedown in the snow, a spreading pool of blood around him and then that astonishing vanishing trick.
“Thank God my mind doesn’t work that way,” Dr. Samuels said. “But someone’s does. What you’ve just seen unlocks the key to use of highly virulent bioengineered diseases.”
“Please explain, Doctor,” Montgomery said quietly.
Mike shot a glance at Lucy Merritt, who was looking between the doctor and the screen, face pale. She’d caught on, too.
“Some lab has figured out the perfect off switch. What I said earlier wasn’t quite true, it was for public consumption. The fact of the matter is, the Soviet Union did actually manage to weaponize a form of HFV that they were going to deploy in Chechnya. But then some scientist said whoa, think it through. Not only would the soldiers fighting there be infected—though my understanding of the Soviet Union is that that wouldn’t have been a major deterrent—but they could never stop the contagion at the border. It would inevitably slip over into Russia and never stop, and not even the Soviets wanted to wipe out their entire population. Most country borders are lines drawn in the sand, not natural borders. And even where there are natural borders, an airborne virus can ride the winds over mountains and cross rivers.
“Another major deterrent to killing off a population if you want to occupy their land is getting rid of the bodies. Humans are many things, but in essence we’re just meat. Killing off a nation of hundreds of millions in one fell swoop leaves millions of tons of dead and decaying meat on the ground that’s hard to dispose of, not to mention pockets of the disease remaining in the soil, seeping down into the groundwater. But what we just saw—it’s genius, though it’s horrifying as well. They’ve figured out a way for the virus to cause the dead body to self-destruct. That ash blowing away won’t contain any viruses. So, Mr. Deputy Director, the perfect weapon might be in enemy hands. A virulent airborne disease that kills in a short time span and disposes cleanly of the body. Guaranteed to allow you to empty a country and then occupy the land.”
“I think that’s just what we’re facing,” Montgomery said quietly.
“Then my initial assessment was correct,” Dr. Samuels answered. “We’re fucked.”
Mike spoke up, his mind already far along the planning stages of the upcoming mission. “Wherever that scene was, it was obviously at a high altitude in mountain terrain. High-altitude missions are what the Tenth Mountain Division does. I have a team of twenty men who are training right now in Alaska’s Granite Range at ten thousand feet. They can be airlifted—”
Montgomery lifted a hand. “Stop, Captain. The team has already been set up. The mission will be carried out by the four people in this room. Two here and two in the field. Dr. Samuels will be the technical advisor, and I will run the field team, made up of you and Dr. Merritt.”
That was so outrageous Mike’s jaw dropped open. He looked over at Lucy Merritt, expecting to see the same outrage, but all he saw was resignation.
He was so angry he had to steady his voice. Montgomery might be a legend in national security circles, around since the Jurassic, but obviously he’d lost it. Going on a mission where a possible bioterror weapon was waiting at the other end, and in harsh mountain conditions, was bad enough when Mike was infiltrating with his men—the finest mountain troops in the world. Fully equipped, fully trained, with the warrior mind-set to get the job done no matter what.
Infiltrating into a high-risk high-altitude mission with Hot Babe—no way. She was probably some hotshot analyst, probably supersmart, very probably smarter than he was. Fine. So let her stay in a heated room analyzing intel. He and his men would be the point of the spear, and no one more than him knew how deadly it was there.
Maybe Hot Babe had a genius IQ, but she’d last ten minutes, tops, at minus forty degrees.
Mike had a lot of experience talking to shit-for-brains superiors, with crazy-ass ideas that sounded fantastic in a room but were a recipe for death in the field. So he put reason and firmness in his voice, while half his brain was already picking men and packing gear.
“Sir.” He flicked a glance at the woman sitting next to Montgomery.
Gorgeous as she was, she didn’t have a mountain climbers’ physique, lean and sinewy with long muscles. Mountain climbers, men and women, also kept themselves low-maintenance.
She was slender but soft, hair done by a pro, nails short but manicured. Expensive clothes that couldn’t just be dumped into a washing machine. The real high-maintenance type.
Nope, she wouldn’t last
five
minutes in the field. “Dr. Merritt might have special qualifications, sir, but I can assure you that my men and—”
five
minutes in the field. “Dr. Merritt might have special qualifications, sir, but I can assure you that my men and—”
“Captain Shafer.” Montgomery’s voice was sharp, cutting right across what Mike was saying. “I am afraid you are laboring under a misapprehension. You’re not the mission. Dr. Merritt is. You’re just along for the ride as muscle.”
IF the situation hadn’t been so truly, galactically awful, Lucy would have laughed at the expression on the captain’s face, or what was visible of it under all that hair and beard. His eyes widened and he closed his mouth with a snap.
As it was, she could hardly stay in her seat with anxiety. Her heart thudded, and every cell in her body was laden with dread. She knew exactly what was coming next.
Uncle Edwin had put up a photograph on the huge monitor. The Palace in Chilongo, the capital of Nhala, a small Himalayan kingdom, vividly bright against the snowy backdrop. The monitor was so large that it was able to take in the Palace in one view. Lucy knew how huge the Palace was, perched up on the level plain of an enormous outcropping that had been carved out of the face of the rock a thousand generations ago.
The Palace was one of the largest buildings in the world, essentially a small city, and she knew every inch of it. The last time she’d seen it, it had been up in flames, devouring the corpses of her mother and father.
She couldn’t do this. She’d spent her life running away from this. She simply couldn’t do it.
“Sir,” Soldier Boy said, sounding anything but respectful. “That’s the Palace in Chilongo, which at the moment is veering toward military rule. Rumor has it that the king is sick, maybe dying, and the country is in the hands of General Dan Changa, who makes Robert Mugabe look reasonable. The streets are patrolled by soldiers day and night, and there’s talk of a coup. Chilongo is at five thousand feet, and your agent was probably at eight thousand feet, an altitude that requires acclimatization and training. A mission to retrieve information your agent might have had would be risky for well-trained soldiers, but it is a suicide mission if I have to go in with a woman who probably requires a weekly manicure and can’t handle a weapon. Even if she does have a doctorate in political science or immunology or whatever. Sir.”
Well. The man needed to be put in his place. Lucy leaned forward into her microphone. “Pedicure, too, Captain Shafer.”
The captain turned a blank look her way. “What?”
“Not only do I require a weekly manicure but I also require a monthly pedicure. And I go to the hairdresser twice a week. However”—she lifted her lips in what was meant to be a smile but was really a snarl—“I
am
a crack shot. I will pit myself against you at any moment on the firing range. And for the record, my doctorate isn’t in political science or immunology. It’s in art history.”
am
a crack shot. I will pit myself against you at any moment on the firing range. And for the record, my doctorate isn’t in political science or immunology. It’s in art history.”
“Children.” Uncle Edwin raised his hands. “We’re in the middle of a national security crisis and I don’t have time for pissing contests.” He quelled both of them with a grim look. “So settle down.”
Lucy sat back, biting her lips against the pressing urge to say
but he started it
.
but he started it
.
“Lucy,” Uncle Edwin said, turning to her. “My agent died twenty miles from the Palace in Chilongo. And the two agents we sent in before him disappeared. In his last message, he said he’d left some proof with someone in the Palace in case something happened to him. The Palace is closed to visitors. We need for you to go back.” He stopped, as if—totally uncharacteristically—he didn’t know what to say next. But then he did, because Uncle Edwin always knew what to say next. “Your country needs you,” he added softly.
Lucy winced. God. She took in a deep breath and put her shaking hands in her lap where no one could see them, particularly not that snake eater across the table from her, looking at her so critically. So okay, she was not a soldier like he was.
She’d been put in enough danger for a lifetime throughout her childhood. So she liked to live safely and comfortably.
So what?
And yet—her country needed her.
If the man had died in Nhala and they needed to go in, it was entirely conceivable that she was the only American alive with an entrée into the Palace, which in the last ten years had become more and more closed off to the world, as had the country itself. Nowadays, you could only visit Nhala on a strictly planned, government-organized tour, and it cost ten thousand dollars for a visa and a down payment to the Tourism Board.
Uncle Edwin touched her lightly on the shoulder, pressed a button on the remote control of the giant monitor. “You got an email from Princess Paso.”
Lucy’s heart stuttered. Paso, her childhood friend. Paso, who had disappeared into Palace life years ago.
Then she frowned. She’d checked her email just before leaving her office. “No, I didn’t.”
“Yes,” he insisted. “You did. Here it is.”
Up on the monitor was a screen grab of a message from her Hotmail address.
Dear Lucy, It’s been so long since we talked! Things are very different now at the Palace. Jomo is very ill and caring for him takes up most of my time. But lately I have been thinking of our time together so many years ago. Do you remember how much fun we had in the days of May?I’m hoping we will see each other soon. Do you remember the legend of the Snow Dragon? An ancient parchment of the legend has been discovered in a cave in the north and I told them you were one of the best manuscript restorers in the world. So the government would like you to restore it to its original glory.You will be receiving an official invitation today.Why don’t we Skype? My Skype name is Parachutegirl. Let me know yours and I’ll put you on my contact list.Paso
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