Immune (3 page)

The wait would not be a long one.

Yolanda Martinez was tired. It was never easy being a 911 operator, even in a small town like Espanola, New Mexico, but working the night shift was the worst. On weekends and paydays, the call volume built steadily as last call at the bars drew nearer. Drunk and disorderly were the most common calls, although stabbings and shootings happened often enough. Then there were the alcohol-related accidents and the late-night angry spousal confrontations.

But tonight was Monday night. Actually, it was now Tuesday morning, and it was most certainly nobody’s payday. It was one of those nights when even the low-riders who liked to cruise town in their hydraulically enhanced hopping cars could not find the energy to stay out past midnight. Out in front of the police station, where the Los Alamos Highway met up with Paseo de Oñate, only an occasional vehicle rumbled past to break the silence. The place was dead.

That should have been a good thing. But Yolanda’s daughter had stayed home sick from school, and Yolanda had been forced to take care of her until her husband, Roberto, had gotten home from work. She had barely had time to get ready for her shift, grabbing a microwave burrito at the Quick Stop on her way to the police station. Sleep was a distant memory. In the absence of things to do, drowsiness tugged at Yolanda’s eyelids as she sipped at another mug of burnt coffee. It didn’t help that Sergeant Billy Collins was fast asleep a dozen feet away from her, his booted feet propped on the desk at an angle that threatened to send a stack of unfinished police reports fluttering toward the floor. At least he didn’t snore.

As long as she could remember, it had been like this. Some nights so busy and disturbing that she wanted to cry, some nights so dismally boring that she wanted to go start trouble herself, just so someone would call.

When the 911 line rang, it startled her so badly that she jumped. Shaking her head to clear the grogginess, Yolanda answered it before it could ring again.

“Espanola Police Department. What is your emergency?”

The voice that answered her was so heavily accented that it took her several seconds to understand the import of what she was hearing.

“Listen carefully. Do not interrupt me, because I will not say this twice and I will not be on the line long enough for you to trace this call. My name is Abdul Aziz. I am the one your government has been hunting with such utter futility. On this night, only a few minutes from now, I will take something that America, the Great Satan, has been hiding from the rest of humanity under the name of the Rho Project. Are you listening to me?”

There was a pause on the line as Yolanda struggled to simultaneously answer and throw a pencil at Sergeant Collins.

“Yes. I am listening.”

The pause at the other end of the line dragged on for several more seconds before the man continued.

“If you hurry, it is possible that you might get some of your mobile police cruisers to the intersection of Highway 30 and Highway 502 before I have finished my business and departed, but I doubt it. There will be dead bodies, so be prepared. If you are wise, you will have the officers take some blood samples that they do not turn over to your military.

“
Inshallah
, even Godless swine like you may yet be enlightened. Hurry now. Do not delay.”

“Wait.”

But the phone line went dead as the word left Yolanda’s lips.

“What have you got?” Sergeant Collins’ voice at her shoulder startled her again. Apparently, the man had not been as deeply asleep as she had thought.

By the time she had played back the recording, Billy Collins was already removing a 12-gauge shotgun from the rack and heading toward the door. He paused to yell back over his shoulder, “Get on the horn to Fred and Enrique. They are the closest cruiser, so get them rolling. I’ll meet them on the way. After that, round up every other squad car we have out there and get them all moving that way.”

“What about the state police?”

“Let them know as soon as you have our folks moving, and put in a call to the sheriff. I won’t wait for them though.”

The door slammed behind Billy Collins as Yolanda pressed the switch that activated the radio microphone. As she began speaking, the thought that she might never see Billy alive again tickled the back of her mind.

The feel of the stock of the AK-47 against his cheek felt good. Something about the solid feel of a Kalashnikov made it obvious why this was the most popular assault rifle in the world. The weapon felt like what it was: reliable.

Jack Gregory thumbed the infrared laser power on and peered out through the scope, which made the targeting dot visible. This was a sniper modification he had added to the rifle to fit this particular purpose, one that he had zeroed in exactly four hours before.

Jack had hand-loaded a hundred rounds of ammunition using the press and loading die he had found in Priest's basement. He always loaded his own ammunition if given the opportunity. A bullet's trajectory brings it out of the barrel of a rifle up through the sight line, continuing to rise several inches for the next hundred-plus meters. Then the round begins to drop, passing back down through the line of sight before running out of energy. Only by loading the exact measure of gunpowder into each round and by using the same weight and shape of slug can a shooter know precisely where the round will hit.

Priest had never bothered with such details. Jack did.

A three-burst crackle of static on the small radio at his side let him know that the truck had just rolled past Bronson's position and was rounding the curve that would shortly bring it into Jack's sight line. Jack had picked this spot so that the first shot would take the driver while the truck was still on the curve, causing it to veer off the road at that point. That would force the man riding shotgun to reach for the wheel, exposing him for the second shot.

As the twin high beams of the refrigerated truck swept around the bend, the driver's face swam into view, illuminated in the infrared scope by the lights from the truck dashboard. The laser dot steadied on the driver's mouth. At this range, the bullet would strike an inch above the dot. Jack's gloved finger squeezed the trigger smoothly, his shoulder kicking back with the recoil as the sound of the weapon split the night air like thunder.

The truck swerved and then straightened as the other man in the truck grabbed the steering wheel. Jack let the natural resistance of his body rock him forward again as smoothly as if he were on springs, his aim-point steadying as his finger squeezed off the second round.

The sound of screeching metal mingling with the echoes of the second gunshot as the truck veered off the road and plowed into the rocks and trees on the far side. The trailer jackknifed past the truck cab, twisting and flipping over as it came to a sudden halt.

Jack was already halfway across the highway by the time the trailer rocked to a stop. A quick glance to his left revealed Janet lying prone a few feet off the road, her rifle leveled and ready to provide covering fire.

Jack reached the far side of the highway and plunged down the slight embankment. The cab of the truck had sandwiched itself around the thick trunk of a pine tree, the lower branches of which were illuminated by a headlight that had somehow survived the impact, although it now pointed skyward. A strong scent of diesel hung in the air.

Jumping up on what was left of the driver's-side running board, Jack tugged at the door, which yielded reluctantly to his second effort. The inside of the cab was a ruin of shattered glass, crumpled metal, and blood. The driver's head was wedged between the spokes of the steering wheel, a large chunk of the rear and top of the skull blown away by the exiting bullet.

Jack cut the seat belt strap and heaved the body out of the cab and onto the ground below. As Jack climbed farther inside so that he could cut the seat belt off the guard, the man's head turned, revealing a perfectly round hole just above the junction of the man's eyebrows. The eyes fluttered open.

Jack cut the strap, grabbed the guard's shoulders, and pulled hard, sliding the body across the wrecked cab and out to fall beside the body of the driver. Jack jumped down, landing just beyond the two men.

If he hadn't already watched the miraculous healing powers displayed by the nanites that had infested Priest Williams’ blood, the sight of the bodies of two men who should already be very dead trying to repair themselves would have shocked him to his core. Already, the wound at the back of the driver's skull had begun to knit itself closed although the damage was so severe that the operation would take some time, assuming the nanites could overcome the loss of brain tissue.

But the slug that had passed through the head of the guard had not created such a large exit wound. The man was beginning to show signs of recovered voluntary movement; his eyes followed every motion as Jack bent down, grabbed the driver's body, and turned it over so that it knelt, face to the ground, toward the west.

Jack repeated the process, positioning the guard's body next to that of the driver. Then, he drew the long, curved Saracen Sword from the sash that bound it to his waist and prodded the sharp point into the small of the guard's back. The body arched involuntarily, trying to move away from the poking blade, and as it did, the fellow's neck rose, raising his head with it.

In a motion so swift that the eye could barely follow, Jack brought the Arabic weapon around in an arc that swept the guard's head from his shoulders. The head rolled across the ground, chased by a large arterial spray of blood as the body collapsed forward once more.

Jack moved to the driver, once again prodding hard into the man's back with the tip of the sword. However, this time the body failed to respond. Apparently, even nanites had their healing limitations, at least within the amount of time he had allowed them. Jack repositioned the driver slightly so that he could place a foot on his back. Then, grabbing a handful of hair, Jack simultaneously lifted and chopped. It took three short strokes with the sword before the head came free.

When a person is beheaded, blood does not gush or flow; it spurts forth, powered by the rapidly dying pump of the heart. And it is not brain or nerve death that kills the heart. It is the lack of sufficient fluid to fill the chambers.

Jack had been eight years old when he had seen his first man beheaded. It had been in the central square of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a place euphemistically known by the foreigners in the Saudi capital as Chop-Chop Square. Jack had watched as the man had been forced to kneel so that he leaned over the chopping block.

At the last instant, a second Saudi had jabbed the kneeling man in the back with the tip of a knife, the involuntary reaction automatic. The man arched away from the knifepoint, the movement extending his neck. And the mighty sword had descended, sending the man's head tumbling into the basket that waited below. The heart of the dead man pumped the life blood from his body in one great pulse, followed by another much weaker jet, before extinguishing itself in a final set of small spasms.

Jack had watched it all from the front row of the gathered crowd, he and his mother guests of honor. The man had been his father.

Draped in the shadows produced by the headlight-illuminated branches above, Jack moved quickly to reposition the bodies in the kneeling position in which he had first placed them. The heads he placed two strides to the west facing back toward their respective body.

Then, retrieving a small plastic baggy from a pouch at his side, Jack extracted a section of fingernail and two hairs.

Hair and nails continued to grow long after a corpse was dead. Jack had taken these particular strands of hair and the accompanying piece of a fingernail from the corpse of Abdul Aziz after pulling the body from Priest's well earlier in the day. They would now serve a higher calling than they would have achieved had they remained attached to their previous owner.

With a quick scratching motion, Jack embedded the fingernail fragment beneath the skin of the driver's right wrist. He then dropped the two hairs onto the man's blood-soaked shirt, letting them attach themselves to the sticky garment.

Done with this portion of the crime scene setup, Jack glanced at his watch. 01:13. The cyan digital numbers winked up at him, as if urging Jack to move faster.

A handful of powerful strides carried him around the jackknifed rig to a spot at the rear of the trailer. It lay on its side, the silver metal warped and twisted, but intact.

As Jack expected, the rear doors were closed and secured with a high-grade lock. Not that it mattered. C4 had a way of dealing with locking mechanisms that was nothing short of spectacular. In this case, Jack used a foot-long strand of det cord, wrapping it through and around the locking mechanism before attaching the detonator.

Unreeling a strand of paired wires, Jack backed around the side of the trailer, securing the wire ends to a small green device with a handle. A quick twist of that handle sent another loud explosion echoing through the night, a sound that would cue Janet to abandon the over-watch position and move back to the helicopter.

The blast had torn open the downside door of the overturned trailer, allowing the refrigerated air to flow out, forming a slow-moving river of condensing fog. Jack switched on his flashlight and stepped inside.