Patient Zero

Chapter One Hundred Seven

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:01 P.M.

THE OUTER COVERING of the Freedom Bell must have been a thin veneer of painted foil that covered hundreds of small ports. Deep inside the bell, in the actual metal of its body, the signal from the detonator ignited countless pockets of highly compressed gas. The whole surface of the bell disintegrated as thousands upon thousands of tiny glass darts were propelled outward with a whoosh of compressed air. No gunpowder, no nitrates: the bell itself was a giant air gun. Each dart was pointed at one end and had walls as thin as spun sugar. Half of them burst as they struck the foil layer on the outside of the bell and they discharged their contents harmlessly into the air. But the other half-maybe fifteen hundred darts in all-tore into the flesh of members of Congress and the press, stinging the hands and faces of tourists and local dignitaries and ambassadors from a dozen nations. I could feel the wave of them pass over me as I toppled to the ground with the Vice President’s wife under me. I had no idea if I’d been hit or not. Everyone was screaming. The VP’s wife shrieked in agony as we crashed onto the concrete floor.

I rolled off her and spun over into a kneeling shooter’s position. How the hell I’d held on to my gun is beyond me, but it was in my hand and I brought it up, fanning it around to find O’Brien, but he was nowhere in sight. All I could see were legs and torsos as people scattered and stumbled and fell. People kicked me as they ran and I had to scramble back from being trampled to death.

I could hear Grace’s voice, high and shrill, ordering the agents in the room to seal the doors. She knew, she understood what we were facing: all of those glass beads fired from the bell were filled with the plague. From her voice I could tell she was every bit as terrified as me.

The Seif al Din had been launched. After all we’d been through, we could lose it all right now if even one of the infected got out.

God

“Echo Team!” I roared, and suddenly Bunny was there, his face white as paste and splashed with blood.

“Are you hit?” he yelled.

“To hell with that-we have to seal the doors!”

“It’s already done!” I heard a voice yell with enormous force and then realized it was Brierly shouting through the amplification of my earjack. “The doors are sealed. I have teams converging to reinforce us from outside.”

The crowd hit the glass walls like a wave and some of the people closest to the doors had to be crushed by the sheer violent mass. There were screams of rage and terror, and pain.

“I have the VP’s wife,” I said. “But I can’t see the First Lady, Brierly, did she get out?”

“My assistant, Colby, and a team of agents got her to the safe room,” he said. “What the hell is going on, Ledger?”

“I’m on the back side of the podium. Find me,” I said. “Now!”

As I turned to start looking for him, Bunny said, “Boss, those darts ”

“I know. Keep an eye out. If anyone starts acting twitchy you take the shot.”

I could see how the weight of what we might have to do hurt the big young man, but he nodded. I looked around and saw Rudy still with the Girl Scouts. One of them was bleeding but from that distance I couldn’t tell if it was from the darts or the panic of the crush.

“Bunny, stay with the VP’s wife,” I ordered. “And keep your eyes open for Agent O’Brien. He’s our hostile. If you see him, kill him.” I gripped his sleeve. “Bunny did you see who Ollie was shooting at?”

“Negative. Everybody’s shooting,” he said, and as if to punctuate his comment a couple of rounds whined over his head and he flinched. The wild gunfire erupted again and the screams rose to a higher pitch.

“Just in case, don’t stand in front of him if he has a gun.”

Bunny turned to me and his eyes searched my face. “Copy that, boss.” He dropped down into a crouch over the Vice President’s wife, who was curled into a fetal ball, her face knotted with pain. Three Secret Service agents converged on him and together they formed a protective ring.

I got to my feet and saw Top and Ollie racing toward one of the doors. They were working together to prevent the crowds from getting out. Grace was already blocking the other door, her pistol out.

I saw Gus Dietrich bent over the governor of Pennsylvania, who was covered with blood. Dietrich was sheltering him with his own body and he had a smoking pistol in his hand. On the floor beside him was a Secret Service agent who had taken the blast of the glass darts full in the face. I met Dietrich’s eyes for a second and we exchanged the briefest of nods. I was conscious of the fact that several of the TV cameramen were still on their feet, their cameras mounted on their shoulders. How the hell they had kept their heads was beyond me, and I could only imagine how half the country was reacting to this. I hoped the networks had blacked it out.

I saw Brierly and grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him against the podium. There were no more gunshots but the air was still torn by screams and yells. We had to bend close and shout in each other’s ear.

“Why the hell did you shoot that woman?” he demanded, and I was conscious of the fact that his pistol was half turned toward me. I batted it aside.

“Andrea Lester was a traitor and a terrorist sympathizer. She rigged her own bell to fire those darts.” I pulled him closer. “She’s working with El Mujahid, and your agent, O’Brien, is one of them. He set off the device.”

That hit him hard. “My God! We screened her, she was cleared to be here.”

“These guys must have had inside help. Trust no one right now.”

“Inside-?”

“No time for that. Listen to me and listen close. The darts from the Bell they contain the infectious agent Grace told you about. You know Ebola? This is a hundred times worse.” I pulled his ear to within an inch of my mouth. “If one single person gets out of this room we’ll have a worldwide plague on our hands. There is no cure.” I said that slowly, punctuating each word. “Believe it.”

Brierly’s face twisted into a mask of such utter horror that I thought he was going to scream. Then he ducked as bullets struck the plastic walls around the Liberty Bell. I turned and saw someone dressed like a Philly cop pointing his pistol at us. He fired again and I pushed Brierly out of the way and returned fire. The fake cop pitched back.

I said, “Contact your men outside. Nobody leaves this building. Nobody! We’re going to need troops and a class-A biohazard team.”

He licked his lips, blinking several times as the devastating news sank in, and then I saw the man behind the bureaucrat take over. “Christ, I hope you’re wrong about this, Ledger.”

“I wish I was,” I said. “But I’m not.”

Brierly tapped his mike and began rapping out a series of curt commands. He ordered that all teams seal and defend every exit in the building, and he reinforced that to include exits that led off from the offices and rooms beyond the STAFF ONLY. “Hummingbird is to be located and secured.” Hummingbird was the code name for the First Lady. Junebug was the VP’s wife. When he got confirmations he turned to me.

“Okay, the First Lady is in the safe room. The VP’s wife is being guarded by one of your men and three of my agents. We’ll move her to the safe room in a bit.” He looked marginally relieved.

“Brierly, you need to make sure everyone understands that we can’t let anyone out of here. Not even the President’s wife.”

He stared at me, torn by his responsibility to protect his charges and the greater reality of the plague. Finally he nodded and keyed his mike. “This is Director Linden Brierly. This is an all-stations alert. On presidential orders no one is to leave this building. No exceptions. Repeat and confirm.” All posts confirmed, but I could imagine a lot of them were either scratching their heads or getting really spooked. “You’d better be right about this.”

I left him to his job and went to try and find O’Brien but I couldn’t see him anywhere. The gunfire was dwindling now, just sporadic shots interspersed with yells and screams.

Movement to my right made me turn and Grace was there, with Top right behind her, both with guns drawn. Grace had blood on her clothes but when she saw my expression she glanced down at her clothes then met my eyes. She shook her head. “There was a young woman standing right in front of me,” she said, and left it there.

The gunfire stopped but the crowd was still surging back and forth like frightened animals in a pen.

“Grace we have to calm these people down!”

“I’m on it,” she said and spun off, calling to Top and Dietrich and soon they were moving like bulls through the crowd, shoving people back, yelling orders to everyone, grabbing Secret Service agents and putting them to work. Skip Tyler was near the back wall, reloading his gun.

“Skip,” I said as I rushed over, “help me find O’Brien.”

“The red-haired guy? He went through there a second ago.” He pointed to the STAFF ONLY door that was tucked into a corner. We raced over but the door was locked from the other side.

“You sure he went this way?”

“Yeah, him and Ollie followed a whole bunch of Secret Service agents who were hustling the First Lady into the safe room.” He looked confused. “That was the protocol, right?”

“Son of a bitch,” I snarled and kicked the door in. “Skip, guard this door. Get Grace or Top to give me some backup, but nobody else gets in. You hear me? Nobody. I’m counting on you to hold this line.”

The young sailor gave me a serious nod and took up a defensive stance. “You got it, Captain.”

I ran through the doorway.