Germ Read online

  Litt bolted from the bathroom and headed for the bedroom door. The monitor on the dresser showed several people running past in the hall. He tripped over something and fell to the floor. He got to his knees, and his handheld jangled, an incoming call. Without looking at it, he answered.

  “Gregor?”

  “Hello, Karl,” Kendrick Reynolds said.

  Litt glanced around the darkened room, half expecting to see the old man standing there, grinning down at him.

  “I’m surprised how quickly we found your number,” Kendrick said. “Once we knew where to look.”

  Litt rose to his feet. He had always believed Kendrick’s assault, if ever he found Litt, would entail an elite division of commandos quietly killing its way into the compound and slipping into the subterranean complex to kidnap or murder the evil Karl Litt. Explosions didn’t fit the model.

  “Karl?”

  “I’m here.” He opened his bedroom door. The corridor fluorescents appeared unaffected. Several were out and others flickered, but they’d been like that as long as Litt could recall. Squinting against the light, he remembered the sunglasses in his hand and slipped them on. The siren blared, piercing his ears.

  “You don’t think you’ll get away, do you?” Kendrick asked. “The sort of air strike we have planned for you will take some time, but I assure you, it’s quite comprehensive. The explosions you’re feeling now are merely a prelude. My advisors thought it would be prudent to knock out any aircraft you have in the hangars. Next, we’ll pelt the surface above your head with earth-penetrating tomography bombs. Those will give the Vikings flying at forty thousand feet with their ESM suites and Inverse-Synthetic Aperture Radar clear pictures of the area’s subterranean architecture. We’ll see your underground complex as if it were topside.”

  Litt stopped moving down the corridor. “How …”

  The sirens stopped.

  Kendrick said, “That’s better. Did your alarms stop because of a lull in our bombing? I’m sure the next wave will commence shortly.”

  “How did you figure the underground part?” Litt asked. He could not imagine that Despesorio’s information was so detailed.

  “You got sloppy, Karl. You let a tracking device get in.”

  That thing inside Allen Parker. It must be more sophisticated than the devices he had surgically installed in his staff—always under the guise of repairing an “accidental” injury. His could not be detected under so much earth and concrete, and they did not provide the altitude relative to ground level. Leave it to Kendrick to have the best.

  He pressed the handheld into his face until his cheek and ear hurt. It was Gregor who had become sloppy, inviting Atropos. He hoped that last interrupted transmission from him marked his death.

  “After the Vikings get a handle on the layout, we’ll send in the F-15s. They’ll drop GBU-28 bombs. You know about those, Karl? Bunker Busters? Forty-seven hundred pounds. Designed to punch through packed earth and twenty-two feet of reinforced concrete before exploding. Boggles my mind, the weapons we have these days. FA-18 Hornets will sweep in next. They’ll cover the whole area— especially inside the smoking craters—with Maverick missiles and napalm. That stuff burns at 3,000 degrees, Karl, enough to make your germ just … disappear. Want to know what’s next?”

  Litt ran an arm over the perspiration on his forehead. All the lab doors were open, the workers gone. He went into his private lab, where he squatted in front of a cabinet and opened it, revealing a safe.

  The floor shook, a prolonged vibration that cracked the tile. Explosions rumbled in the distance, deep and low. If Kendrick had faithfully described the attack, either the tomography bombing had started or they were still striking at the hangars and the assassins’ Cessnas. He hoped the Hummer he had stashed in the jungle was small enough and distant enough to escape the bombing. He hoped he could get to it before the serious ordnance rained down. He hoped he wouldn’t stumble into the ground troops Kendrick would surely send in last.

  And while he was hoping, he hoped to someday see Kendrick feel the bite of his germ and watch him as he died.

  “How can you do this?” he asked. “You’re bombing a foreign country.”

  “Haven’t you heard? You’re operating the largest methamphetamine laboratory in the world there. Side things too—refined cocaine hydrochloride, heroin, marijuana, a little money laundering for the Colombian and Bolivian cartels. All kinds of nasty stuff we created the Anti-Drug Abuse Control Commission to stamp out. Considering how much anti-drug money Paraguay and Brazil get from us, they were more than happy to cooperate.”

  Inside the safe was a Halliburton briefcase. Litt pulled it out and stood. Its heft made him feel a little better.

  “You realize,” Kendrick said, “you might have gotten away if you’d have left the president’s family out of your plans. Without his authorization, I would have had to send hired guns. And we’ve seen recently how ineffective they can be.”

  “Das gebrabbel. Make sense, Kendrick.” He headed for the stairs.

  “You could have targeted me without hearing so much as a raised voice.” A pause. The clinking of ice against glass near the receiver. The old Schlauberger was having a cocktail. “My time’s almost up anyway.”

  Footfalls slapping against the tile startled him. He turned as a man ran past, lab coat flapping. The man rounded the next corner, going for the exit.

  Litt moved the handheld closer to his ear and heard, “… was the only thing that allowed me to move so quickly.”

  “What? What was?”

  “Hold on a mo—”

  Litt heard him speak to someone. The background noise was a cacophony of voices, some raised in excitement, others droning out information. Litt grew incensed at the thought that Kendrick’s room hummed with the activity of his, Litt’s, destruction.

  After a moment, Kendrick came back on. “Excuse me, Karl. We have a lot going on.”

  He pictured Kendrick’s smug expression. He said, “Du willst mich wohl fiir dumm! This isn’t over, Kendrick. You’re too late.”

  “You mean your hit list? The people you infected? Yes, your bitterness, your vengeance, will be felt, if that pleases you. But that’s where it ends, Karl. You will have killed them in vain. The media will assume some cult infected them through a contaminate in their food or drink or injected them and then sent out a list of victims. Cruel, but nothing else. They will never hear from you. They will never know why.” He paused, then added, “We’ll probably frame a militant group, take them out of the picture, and make our citizens feel safe again. In a few years, even their grief will fade.”

  Litt arrived at the door to the laboratory wing. He moved his face to the facial thermogram. Nothing happened. His heart wedged in his throat. He looked into the black pane again, his reflection glaring back. The door clicked open. As he started up the stairs, he said, “I’ll save you a spot in hell, old man.”

  “You do that, Karl.”

  He heard a click on the line, then nothing. He growled and shoved the handheld into his pocket. At the top of the stairs, he pushed through the door into the sun and the sound of droning planes.

  ninety-three

  Convinced they had been spotted and fired upon by a guard with some sort of monster-gun, Julia and Stephen scuttled back down the chimney as fast as they could. Julia anticipated her next moves: roll away from the ladder to make room for Stephen; grab the flashlight; draw the Sig Sauer; run like hares for the adit. Stephen clambered down right above her.

  He was counting—“Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, breathless, thinking he somehow knew when the next assault would strike.

  “Rungs,” he said. “Nineteen, twenty. Trying … not to . .. panic. Now shhh. Twenty-three, twenty-four …”

  Her feet touched dirt and she rolled away.

  “Thirty-one, thirty-two!”

  She grabbed him and started tugging.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Stephen s
aid.

  Julia shook the flashlight and it lit up. She centered it on the hole in the mine’s ceiling where the shaft rose to the surface.

  “Shouldn’t we have heard something by now if they were after us?” he said.

  Overhead, the siren stopped. Then another sound, thunderlike, and the ground vibrated. Dirt sprinkled from the ceiling.

  “That was an explosion,” Julia said.

  “Is this Kendrick Reynolds’s doing?”

  She shrugged.

  “We gotta get Allen out of there,” he said, stripping off his gloves, unraveling the tape at his ankles and wrists. Julia did the same, then yanked the beanie off her head. Stephen was already heading back up. He rammed his shoulder into the manhole cover, heaving it to the side and hoisting himself up and out.

  Julia followed, coming up behind the Dumpster. Smoke spiraled into the sky. She peered around the big trash container. A hangar was torn and smoking. It was at the far end of the airstrip near three small jets. One of the jets was missing a wing and rested on its nose, its tail angling up like a sinking ship. It was leaning against one of the other planes.

  A fighter roared in, dropping dozens of what looked to Julia like bowling balls. They struck the cluster of jets and another hangar, setting off a chain reaction of explosions.

  “Guards,” Stephen said.

  He was standing behind her, looking in a different direction. She followed his gaze to two guards by the gate and guard shack. They were huddled together, crouched low, casting wide eyes at the plane flying away. When it disappeared, they scanned the grounds, perhaps hoping for someone to tell them how to interpret this new event. One of them held a walkie-talkie to his mouth, yelling into it. A crash of metal caught their attention.

  Julia turned also. A half dozen people had come through a door at the end of a Quonset hut and were streaming toward the gate.

  “That’s the Quonset Tate said the stairs were in,” she said.

  Stephen brushed by her.

  “Wait!”

  But he was gone, around the container and jogging down a small hill toward the huts. She started after him, then stopped when one of the guards raised his submachine gun. She yanked her pistol out of her waistband. She had the guard’s head in her sights when he slipped away. She watched him apparently decide that the fleeing workers knew something he didn’t. He turned and trotted through the gate, machine gun bobbing on its strap at his side. His buddy watched him go, then followed.

  Stephen intersected the group of evacuees. He reached out, grabbed two handfuls of white lab coat, and lifted its occupant off the ground. He spoke, the man shook his head no, and Stephen dropped him on his backside. He snagged another man, got another negative response. She couldn’t make out his words, but she knew the theme: Where’s my brother?

  Cautious—more cautious than Stephen, at least—she started for him. She kept her gun at her side and her finger flat against the trigger guard.

  His latest captive pointed and must have indicated knowledge of Allen’s location; Stephen swung the hapless soul around like a doll, clasped him in a headlock, and marched him toward the Quonset door.

  Julia picked up her pace.

  Suddenly from behind one of the other Quonsets stepped Atropos. He saw Stephen and his captive go through the door and started after them. Julia raised her weapon, taking aim at the killer. Another group of people came out the door, blocking her shot. Atropos was almost there. She raised her aim and shot the light fixture hanging over the door.

  Atropos spun, backing away as he did, quick as a cat. He pivoted his left arm up and immediately squeezed off a round into a woman who had darted in front of Julia. The people broke into a dance of frenzied activity and hysterical screams. Two more Atroposes came around a corner. They reached their brother and advanced toward her as one. She ran to the side of the Quonset, running toward the rear with all of her strength, hoping they didn’t reach the corner behind her too soon.

  ninety-four

  Heart blockage in the early stages of Ebola infection is a blessing. It saves the patient from the agony of feeling his organs melt away, of watching his flesh blister, swell, and split, of hearing his own screams until his throat wears out or fills with blood and bile. It comes from the same well of good fortune that drowns a man before he is eaten by sharks, or poisons a spy with a capsule of strychnine under the tongue before his enemy breaks out the tongs and cattle prods.

  Allen Parker’s heart was granting him this mercy—winding down, responding to the Ebola virus, which was attacking and short-circuiting the electrical impulses of his atrioventricular node. His breathing became shallow and labored. But the pain continued. His hands, which had been roaming his body looking for a way to snuff the fires that scorched him in a thousand places, slowed and stopped.

  And with each minute, his heart dropped a few more beats, until—

  No pain. Just like that, it was gone.

  The little man in Stephen’s grasp had stopped squirming

  and now walked obediently ahead of him. With each explosion—

  reaching them as muffled thunder and the trembling of the staircase they descended—Stephen thought he was going to bolt. But they were heading down into the subterranean complex, and the man wanted out of it—a direction Stephen blocked.

  At the base of the staircase, his unwilling guide stepped up to a black tile in the wall, and the metal entry door clicked open. The man tugged at it and stepped into a poorly lighted corridor.

  Stephen’s nostrils flared at the redolence of earth and dust. He looked for signs that the corridor was dangerous, then stopped looking; safe or not, he was going in.

  The man marched stiffly until they reached an intersection. He paused and selected the right-hand passage. They approached a door with a small square window showing brighter light on the other side. Before reaching it, they turned down another corridor.

  Stephen, his big paw clamped around the back of the man’s neck, gave him a shake. “No tricks.”

  “Please …” the man said. He pointed weakly in the direction they were heading. Finally he stopped in front of a door.

  “Open it,” Stephen commanded.

  The man threw back a rusty bolt, turned the door handle, and dropped straight to the floor, out of Stephen’s grasp. He rolled away, stood, and ran.

  “Hey!” Stephen took two steps toward him, stopped. He looked back at the door. Light from inside sliced into the corridor from a thin breach. He pushed on the door.

  A cardiac monitor’s C-sharp rhythm of ventricular fibrillation struck him like a bad smell: heart failure on the brink of flatline.

  And then the visual assault: a man lying in a near-black pool on the floor, a blossom of blood in the center of his torso. And Allen sprawled on a cot, mouth agape, one eye swollen shut, the other staring blindly at the ceiling.

  “Oh no, no, no …”

  Stephen’s heel hit the pool and flew out from under him. His head cracked against the tile. He stared at the caged light in the ceiling, thinking for a moment that he was supposed to see something fantastic in it. Then he rolled his head backward and saw an upside-down version of the doorway and the dark corridor beyond. He rose from the gore, blood clinging to him from his armpit to his knee. He rubbed his head and went to his brother.

  “Allen! Allen!” He shook Allen’s shoulders, sickened by the way his head bounced limply and lolled to the side. “No, Allen! Not here, man! Don’t give them the satisfaction!”

  He aimed his fist at Allen’s sternum and administered a precordial thump. The heart responded—slightly. He tilted Allen’s head back, pinched the nostrils, and blew twice into his mouth, filling Allen’s lungs. He found the base of the sternum and moved up two fingers. His hands nearly covered Allen’s chest. He leaned over and pushed down … came up … pushed down … came up—pumping the heart for him. After thirty compressions, again he filled Allen’s lungs.

  The cardiac monitor fell silent, then beeped. Allen hitched
up, gasping for breath, righting against Stephen’s hands.

  “Yes!” Stephen said and threw his arms around his brother.

  Allen went limp. His head flopped back, and once again, the EKG machine took over the job of screaming for help in a sporadic, weak rhythm.

  Stephen gave him another precordial thump and restarted CPR … two breaths … thirty compressions … breathing … pushing … He had to restrain himself from frantically pumping on Allen’s chest without rhythm or meter. He wanted to force life back into him. Tears flew from his cheeks, splattering against Allen’s bloody face. He pulled in a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and pushed.

  Allen heaved up, gasping. Stephen reached behind his head.

  “Allen! Stay with me.”

  The cardiac monitor beeped … beeped …

  Allen seized Stephen’s shoulders and hitched in two sharp, raspy breaths … then nothing … He fell limp again.

  This time, there was no response to the precordial thump. Stephen scanned the room. No defibrillator. His eyes roamed the clutter scattered on the floor: X-ray film, surgical instruments, rolls of cloth tape … ampoules of medicine and syringes.

  He swung off Allen’s cot and dropped to his hands and knees on the floor. He snatched up an ampoule and read its label. Magnesium sulphate 8 mmol. Sometimes used during resuscitation, but under what conditions? He tried to remember. Administering CPR was one thing—kids learned that. Injecting drugs to restart a heart was something else completely—despite being seven credit hours away from earning an MD. Potassium chloride was a good example. Depending on the cause of the heart failure, potassium could either restart it or frustrate efforts that would otherwise work.

  He kept scooping up and examining ampoules, hoping a solution would spring out at him.

  Epinephrine. Adrenaline!

  He found a syringe, loaded it up with the epinephrine, and gently injected the drug under Allen’s tongue, which would cause it to work as quickly as an intravenous line. He breathed into him, then rose, his straight arms coming together over Allen’s sternum. This time, as he pumped, he did not count. He prayed.

  Acutely aware of the heart under his palms, he thought of the life that was slipping away. He remembered Allen the toddler who’d scribbled with Crayons on the walls … the eight-year-old who had crashed his bike, knocking out a tooth, and who had run to his brother for comfort instead of to Mom … the new teenager who’d shyly asked Stephen what it was like to kiss a girl… the young man who’d performed a near-perfect backflip on the living room floor when he received his acceptance to med school—only “near perfect” because after landing he had crashed down on an antique coffee table, obliterating it. He recalled his brother’s face when—