Biowar

31

“You don’t look that good, Charlie Dean.”

“Thanks, princess.”

“Don’t ever call me that.” Lia stood up from the table, her chair legs screeching against the tiled floor of the hotel café. “Tommy calls me that and I hate it.”

“You ever tell him that?”

“He’s not important enough to tell.”

“Sorry.” Dean rubbed his eyes with his hand. His stomach had settled a bit, but he hadn’t felt like eating anything. “It cold in here?”

Lia reached across the table and put her hand against his forehead. “You’re burning up.”

“I’m okay,” he told her. “I’ll be okay. Let’s just get this thing over with.”

“Charlie — this isn’t going to be like yesterday. These guys are very serious.”

He pushed himself up from the table and narrowed his eyes. “I’m fine. Just let’s get going, all right? How does the com system work?”

Dean pushed away from the table, willing his legs to stop wobbling. He was chilled, as if he were getting a bad fever, but he’d been through worse, much worse, and he was going to get through this thing now.

Where the hell was Keys? He’d warned him about food poisoning once, more than once, gone on in great detail.

We carry billions of little buggers around in our stomachs all the time. Russian roulette — you’re going to get nailed eventually. Bright side of it is, only a few can really kill us.

“Touch the back of your belt,” said Lia.

“Specific spot?”

“Any spot. That turns it on. Has to be your finger — it keys to your personal magnetic field. If you turn it off, they can’t hear you. Don’t pay attention to what Rockman says. It’s agent-controlled.”

“You all right, Charlie?” said Rockman in his ear. The voice was even spookier than with the eyeglass system, a whisper that could belong to God, or at least a guardian angel.

“Yeah, I’m cool. Let’s get this stinkin’ show on the road, huh?”

Lia watched Dean walk out of the restaurant. Like nearly every man she’d met, he was a stoic asshole when it came to being sick.

Most likely, it was just food poisoning, something in the overly rich cream sauces that had been slathered over their food. But she couldn’t dismiss the notion that Dean had been poisoned by the people who had kidnapped him, though why wasn’t clear.

Outside the hotel, Lia watched Dean flag down a taxi. It was one of theirs, driven by a low-level embassy CIA officer she’d borrowed. A van manned by the Air Force people Desk Three had shanghaied from Germany started out after the taxi pulled away; two more Air Force security types were already in the park where Dean was headed. Lia got into her rental Renault and slid on a headset, which was connected to a small radio in her purse. The unit allowed her to tie into the military people, who were using Special Forces-style PSC-5 radios, with satellite phones as backups.

“All right, let’s all check in,” she said.

Two of the Air Force people spoke over each other.

“Let’s keep the testosterone down, please,” she snapped. “Sean,” she said, picking the team leader in the first van, “you’re first.”

As they drove toward the park, Lia took out her handheld computer and fired it up, switching into the surveillance net covering the area where Dean had been dropped off the day before. Small video cams had been placed atop the brick pillars that stood at the two entrances; between them they covered 96 percent of the park. A gussied-up Fokker with optical sensors — an NSA-owned “Eyes” asset — orbited to the south, providing real-time video and sharper-resolution, near-real-time digital still feeds of anything they wanted superior detail on, like license plates and faces. Operated by an Air Force Special Operations crew that did not officially exist, the plane had twice the capability of the CIA model it had been based on — a William Rubens requirement. It could fly between three and five miles away from a target and still provide reasonable surveillance, though it had to be careful about local flight rules.

“Dean’s just getting there,” Rockman told her. “Locator’s working fine. Did he take his iodine supplements?”

“What am I, his nurse?”

“My, we’re cranky today,” said Telach.

Theoretically, the radioactive material used by the tracking system posed no threat — as long as it remained solid. If it broke up in his body — occasionally this happened — the iodine could be absorbed by his thyroid, which was why he’d been given supplements to block it.

“Dean’s in the park, walking to the bench,” said Rockman. “All right, everybody be real careful now. We don’t want to get too obvious.”

Lia ignored Rockman, leaning out the window to get a glimpse of the park. She saw Dean sitting at the bench; then her view was obscured by two old people feeding the pigeons.

“Go around,” she told her driver. “I want to keep him in sight.”

“That wasn’t what you had laid out earlier.”

“I changed my mind.”

Dean felt the boards at the back of the bench slap into his back as he sat. His whole body seemed achy.

Maybe it wasn’t food poisoning. Maybe it was the flu.

Good. Maybe he’d give it to these bastards.

His stomach pressed up against his esophagus, and for a second he thought he was going to have to find a bush. But it calmed, and he started to feel a bit better.

A husband and wife, obviously American tourists, stopped near him.

“Would you take our picture?” asked the woman, gesturing with a camera.

Dean hesitated, then reached for the camera. He felt slightly dizzy but managed to take the picture for them. When he sat back down, an old lady wearing far too much perfume had perched herself at the other end of the bench. She had a paper bag of popcorn, which she tossed out piece by piece to the pigeons.

Dean looked in the other direction, waiting for the goons.

Let’s get this thing over with, he thought to himself.

Rockman switched the feeds back and forth, still unable to spot the contact people. He had a situation map on the main screen; Dean’s position was marked with a green triangle and the two Air Force people in the park with squares. (They had old-fashioned FM transmitters.) Beyond the park were the three vans packed with military people they’d borrowed, Lia in her rental, and a pair of embassy Marines in plainclothes but with diplomatic plates and IDs, in case they had to deal with the local authorities. A pair of Army AH-6 scout helicopters borrowed from a unit stationed in Germany stood by at the airport available for their use; equipped with rockets, Hellfire missiles, and machine guns, the helicopters were a last resort if things got nasty.

They could always call on the local authorities, of course. But Rockman figured if things got that bad, they might just as well use the F-47Cs that were on the ground at Avino Air Force Base and nuke the place.

A figure of speech. The thermobaric bombs slung on the robot planes were designed to merely eradicate bunkers, not whole cities. The weapons ignited a mixture of solid fuel and air in a confined space, such as a bunker or a tunnel. The result was a kind of flash fire that created massive pressure to destroy the target.

“How we looking?” asked Telach, coming over to his console.

“Just waiting for them to show.”

“Biology people ready?”

Rockman thumbed to the back benches where an NSA scientist named Bill Chaucer was sitting with another expert from the CDC. They had open lines to university labs around the country, as well as Desk Three’s own research team and a vast database of knowledge.

“Wish I had that backup for my college chemistry class,” said Rockman.

“I doubt it would have helped,” said William Rubens, appearing behind him.

“We’re just waiting for them to make contact,” said Telach.

“How’s Dean look?”

“I think it’s food poisoning,” said Rockman. “He does, too.”

Rubens’ brow furrowed, but he said nothing, slowly rocking on his feet as he gazed at the screens.

Dean pushed his shoulders back and let out a slight groan. His neck muscles were so tight he felt as if they were pressed between clamps.

“Genau das habe ich gesagt,” said the old woman.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” said Dean. “I. think I have a cold coming on. Something like that.”

She turned toward him. “Genau das habe ich gesagt.”

“I don’t speak Austrian.”

“German,” whispered Rockman.

“Genau das habe ich gesagt. Do exactly as I say.”

Dean followed the woman’s glance downward toward the bag. Rather than popcorn, she was holding a gun.