Hot Zone (Major Crimes Unit Book 2) (10 page)

“
M
CU, freeze!”

Sarah dove down behind the coffee counter while her father
and his men dropped down into cover behind various upturned tables. Meanwhile,
several hundred innocent travellers started a stampede at the sight of Howard’s
gun. Like frightened antelope they ran and leapt for cover and filled the air
with their terrified screams. Sarah stood amongst the flowing river of people
and felt lost, confused. The fact that Howard had managed to relocate her and
her father was a shock, but it was probably inevitable since they’d been forced
to flee so suddenly from the warehouse. Carefully laid plans were the ones that
left most clues when gone awry.

“Sarah, get down on the floor,” shouted Howard. “There’s
only two ways out of this airport, dead or alive, and unlike you I don’t enjoy
shooting former colleagues.”

Sarah scurried from her hiding place over to where her
father was hiding behind a table. Howard could probably have drawn a bead on
her then, but she had counted on him not wanting to pull the trigger just yet
and she was right. He didn’t fire and she made it over to her father in one
piece. Major Stone was unzipping the diplomatic pouch he’d been carrying in his
coat pocket. Sarah was flabbergasted when he pulled out two pieces of a
handgun, as well as a loaded magazine. He slid the detached barrel onto the
handgun’s frame and slapped the magazine into the bottom of the grip. It was a
small gun, a bright silver Ruger.

“This is madness,” Sarah told her father.

“This is war,” he said. “There’s no distinction between
madness and sanity, only what’s necessary. We need to get that briefcase.”

“Why, what’s in it?”

“Krenshaw’s lifework, and it’s going to go off right in our
faces if we don’t get it and reset the timer.”

Howard shouted at them again. “Major Stone, Sarah, give
yourselves up. None of you are getting away.”

Sarah glanced around between the upturned tables and spotted
Ollie — her Uncle — crouching next to Rat and Spots. Ollie gave her a sad look
that suggested he regretted the situation as much as she did. They had crossed
a line and neither could see a way back.

Krenshaw made a break for it. The skinny doctor raced across
the cafe floor, heading for his briefcase, but stopped short and spun as a
bullet struck his chest. He collapsed onto one of the tables and lay still.

There was more panic as the innocent bystanders abandoned
their hiding places and broke for greater safety. The gun shot had been like a
starting pistol and now they were all off their lines and running for their
lives.

“This is the final warning,” Howard bellowed in a voice more
commanding than Sarah remembered. “Come out, hands up and empty. This ends
now.”

Major Stone leapt up and took a shot at Howard, missing the
target by a hairsbreadth. The bullet lodged in the concrete of the wall and
sent Howard leaping back into cover.

It was then that Airport security guards surrounded the
area. Each carried a Heckler & Koch MP5s. Enough firepower to rip a man to
confetti.

Sarah went to put her hands in the air and surrender, but
her father grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back down. “Don’t disappoint
me,” he said to her, with a pulsing rage in his emerald eyes.

“We’re done for,” she said. “This is a colossal screw-up. I
don’t know what I’m even doing here with you. You never gave a damn about me
and I followed you into Hell anyway. I’m an idiot.”

“You are my daughter,” he said. “And we will make it out of
this, I promise you. You’re one of my men now and I don’t intend on seeing you
die until you’re ready.”

Sarah shook her head. “You never made a single promise to me
that you kept. You’ve been helping Krenshaw all along, haven’t you? We didn’t
capture him, we rescued him.”

“Krenshaw is a means to an end. His work is what matters. My
mission is to make sure that what is inside that briefcase serves its purpose.”

“What purpose?”

There was more gunfire and Sarah flinched, before carefully
peering over an upturned table. To her utter surprise, Rat had managed to get
the jump on one of the airport security guards and had taken his weapon, which
he quickly turned on the rightful owner and two of his colleagues. Spots was
quick to scurry over and grab one of the dead men’s fallen MP5s and join the
firefight.

The air filled with the sound of a dozen jackhammers.

Sarah’s father beamed, the first time she’d ever seen such
an expression from him. “See?” he said. “There is no situation my men can’t
handle.”

“We’re outnumbered five to one,” she said.

“Exactly, they won’t know what hit them.”

Sarah’s father leapt up and expended what was left of his
handgun’s ammo and sent a handful of guards into cover. It bought enough time
for Spots to pick up another fallen MP5 and toss it to him. He caught the
weapon easily and fired off a stream of rounds in one smooth motion, taking out
another guard. The rest of the airport’s vanguard visibly shrank as they realised
they were losing men fast. Rat’s assault had been quick and brutal, rocking
their confidence and keeping them from advancing. Now, barely a single one of
them dared to break cover.

Sarah stayed where she was. Things had got completely out of
hand. She had just wanted to flee the country, start again. She had never
wanted this, never wanted to fight her own country. As much as she hated what
her government represented, she bore no malice to the people who fought under
its banner. They were innocent cogs, like she had once been.

Finally, she broke cover, but not to fight. Instead, she
hurried towards the briefcase, intending to stop whatever was inside of it from
getting out. Was it Ebola, or something worse? The thought of something
invisible yet deadly made her skin crawl. She wasn’t trained to fight something
she couldn’t see. Put a man in front of her and she could pull the trigger, but
a virus…

Whistling, snapping gunfire continued overhead as Sarah
crawled along on her belly. She heard wounded men cry out in pain but was sure
none of them were her father’s men. Rat, Spots, and Major Stone were ex-SAS and
could eat airport security guards for breakfast, as they were doing now — but
they couldn’t fight forever. This was a suicide mission. How had her father
changed so much? What had happened to him to make him disregard his life?

She was just about to grab the briefcase, and could even
hear something inside ticking, when a hefty boot caught her in the ribs.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” Rat appeared in her view
and kicked her hard again in the stomach. He fired off a few rounds from the
two MP5s he was now holding akimbo, before ducking down into cover beside Sarah
and grinning in her face.

Sarah tried to catch her breath but Rat punched her in the
mouth and sent her into a daze.

“Told you I was going to get some payback, you ugly bitch,”
he said in the raspy tones of a predator.

“My…my father will kill you.”

“Maybe, or maybe he won’t give two shits. Way I see it,
we’re all dead anyway. The only thing that makes our lives mean anything is
what’s inside that briefcase. What do you plan on doing with it?”

Sarah winced and tried to catch her breath. “I plan on
stopping it going off.”

Rat laughed. “Good luck with that. I don’t think it has an
‘off’ switch.
You
do, though.” He prodded her mouth with the muzzle of
one of the MP5s. The hot metal burned her lips, and then her tongue as Rat
forced it between her teeth. “Say goodnight, sweetheart.”

“Goodnight.”

Rat’s head exploded and Sarah yelled out in horror as his
body toppled sideways.

Ollie looked down at Sarah with that same regretful smile
he’d had on his face earlier. “I told you he’d stab you in the back as soon as
he was supposed to be watching it. Come on, we have to give ourselves u-”

Ollie flew backwards and landed hard on his back. The colour
red immediately began to bloom on his chest.

Sarah slid over to him on her belly. “Shit! Ollie. Ollie,
no.”

Ollie shook his head, gasped, then managed to talk in a
groan. Blood appeared at the corners of his slowly moving mouth. “I knew
about…the briefcase. I know and it’s…wrong. You need to stop your father,
Sarah. Darla, she would be…s-s-so ashamed.”

“Shush,” said Sarah, but Ollie was already dead. She didn’t
kiss him or weep, she had barely known the man; perhaps that was the biggest
tragedy of all. There was still time to make it right, though. If Sarah had
never got involved in any of this, then her father and Krenshaw would have
carried out their plan without a hiccup. Her involvement, however, had screwed
everything up, and there was still time for her to put a stop to her father’s
mission.

Sarah turned away from Ollie and went to go back and grab
the briefcase. She had to stop this.

But her father reached it first. Major Stone held the
briefcase to his chest and stood up. “Everybody, cease your fire.”

His voice was so booming that all of the remaining guards
stopped firing immediately. They had lost so many men that they were probably
eager for the bullets to stop flying.

Major Stone continued speaking. “I hold in my hands the most
deadly disease known to man, engineered by the man responsible for this
country’s recent Ebola epidemic. My hand is on the release button. If I fall or
sleep or get bored, this briefcase will open and the world’s most deadly disease
will escape. It will kill everybody here, as well as anyone who takes a breath
of whatever air escapes into the vents above our heads. It has been engineered
to survive almost indefinitely and to multiply quickly within its host. It has
been set on a timer, which I have just extended and will continue to do so as
long as I am alive. My men-” he looked around and saw Spots was the only one
still standing, but he was bleeding badly from a wound in his stomach. His face
was pale from massive blood loss. Major Stone exhaled, threw up an arm and
casually shot Spots between the eyes with machine gun fire. His body slumped to
the floor and Major Stone turned back to his audience. “Correction: my
daughter
and I are going to leave this airport through whatever back door
is closest. Then we will enter a car and drive to safety. Once there, I will
arrange for safe disposal of this virus. Do not doubt me, gentlemen, for I am
entirely willing to watch this wretched world burn.”

Howard stepped out from behind a cracked and crumbling
pillar with his gun held up and ready. He was sweating badly. “We can’t let you
walk out of here, Major Stone. Not going to happen.”

Major Stone nodded. “Of course. I understand. Then I suppose
none of us will be walking out of here.” He raised his MP5 and aimed it at
Howard. It should have been enough to provoke a shot from one of the airport’s
security guards, but they obviously feared the virus too much to pull the
trigger. “Would you prefer a bullet, Agent? Or would you like to lose your skin
once the virus takes you? I offer you the courtesy of choice because you were
once a friend of my daughter.”

Howard put a hand up, just to reassert that no one should
pull the trigger. “All flights have been grounded, Major. This airport is very
easy to contain once it’s on lockdown, which it now is. Your super-virus will
wither and die right here where we stand.”

Major Stone grunted. “Enough deaths to make the news, I
assure you — and that is the point, after all. There are powerful men in this
world who wish to send a message; and I am their messenger. The death of you
and a handful of upstanding airport personnel will suffice, as Pyrrhic a
victory as it may be. I am not a man who fails, upon my honour.”

Howard lowered his gun and sighed. “What happened, Major? I
saw what Krenshaw did to the people at Whiteknight hospital. Why do you want to
follow a coward? Why do you want to be associated with a man like him?”

“He and I are not the same, Agent. Count the dead around
you. Do I look like a coward?”

Howard looked around at all the dead bodies, men from both
sides. “That’s how people will remember you if you do this, Major.”

“I’m SAS. Men in the SAS don’t get to leave legacies. Make
of me what you will once I am dead. I couldn’t care less.”

Sarah saw her father’s finger twitch on the trigger, the MP5
still pointed at Howard. If he fired, Howard would die and the security guards
would open fire. Then Major Stone’s hand would fall from the briefcase and
God-knows-what would be released into the confined atmosphere of the airport.
She had to do something.

“Stop this, daddy. You’re not going to achieve anything,
don’t you see? I don’t want to die.”

Her father looked down at her with sadness. “You are
pitiful, daughter. Don’t you want to die for something important?”

“No,” she said. “I want to live for something important.”

Major Stone shook his head. He scooped his foot around one
of the MP5s that Rat had dropped when he died and kicked it towards her. “Shoot
me, then,” he said. “You want this to end, then be a man and finish it. Show me
you have a cock.”

Sarah looked down at the weapon by her leg and went to grab
it but couldn’t. She couldn’t make her hand move towards the MP5, even though
she knew that she could end this right now. She had killed men before, but she
couldn’t kill this one. She couldn’t shoot her father.

Major Stone rolled his eyes and looked like he wanted to
spit on her. “I wish I’d had a son. To think that Ollie lost a boy of four
while you continue to live.”

Sarah growled. “I’m not a fucking man, daddy; get over it
already. But you’re right, I can’t shoot you.” She leapt up and tackled her
father around the legs, lifting him up and throwing him backwards. He fell onto
his shoulders, the briefcase flailing in his hand, his MP5 firing at the
ceiling. They hit the ground together and Sarah immediately started pummelling
her father in the face, smashing his stern cheeks and grizzled chin, glaring
into his emerald eyes that matched her own. She beamed and cackled as the blood
began to escape Major Stone’s mouth. “Doesn’t mean I won’t kick your arse,
though,” she screamed at him.