Patient Zero

Chapter Eighteen

Grace, Maryland / Monday, June 29; 8:39 A.M.

GRACE COURTLAND SAT in her comfortable leather swivel chair and sipped a Diet Coke and watched the eight color monitors that showed the inside of Joe Ledger’s car, each room of his apartment, and the consulting room in Dr. Rudy Sanchez’s office. She’d been amused when they’d each searched for bugs. None of them had found anything, of course. If they had someone on her staff would lose his job. For what the DMS paid for holographic relay technology it had better not show up on a sweep or be visible to the naked eye. The DMS had deep pockets and Mr. Church liked having toys that no one else in the schoolyard had.

Her desk was stacked with reports on Ledger. Bank account records, tax returns, school transcripts, his complete military record, and copies of everything filed about him since he joined the Baltimore Police. She’d read it all, but Joe Ledger was still a puzzle. There were so many things about him that made him excellent material for the DMS, and Grace was finding it harder and harder to hold to her position that Ledger was a screwup. If it wasn’t for that damning evidence on the task force duty log

That morning she’d read through Ledger’s military service file. He had scored high marks in every area of training and had excelled in close-quarters combat, surveillance and countersurveillance, land warfare, and all immediate action drills. There were several letters recommending Ledger for OCS, but each included notes saying that Ledger had declined the offer. One handwritten note, from Colonel Aaron Greenberg, base commander at Fort Bragg, read: “Staff Sergeant Ledger has indicated that his goal is to use his army training to better prepare him for a career as a law enforcement officer in his hometown of Baltimore, MD. I expressed to him that this was a gain for Baltimore PD but a real loss for the army.”

It was a pretty remarkable letter, but she chose to interpret it as a lack of ambition. What really caught her attention, though, was the transcript of a deposition of Ledger’s company commander, Captain Michael S. Costas. Following the warehouse raid Church had sent agents to depose Costas under oath and after signing a secrecy agreement. Costas spoke freely and glowingly about Ledger, but one exchange in particular must have struck Church-it was the only section highlighted in yellow:

DMS: Captain Costas, in your professional opinion do you believe Joe Ledger to be reliable?

COSTAS: Reliable? That’s a funny question. Reliable in what way?

DMS: If he were to become part of a special branch of the military?

COSTAS: You mean like Homeland? Something like that?

DMS: Something like that, yes.

COSTAS: Let me put it this way. I’ve been in the army since I was eighteen, and a Ranger since I was twenty. I’ve been in combat in the Mog and in Desert Storm. I’ve also served in training schools for Rangers and I’ve learned to trust my judgment on which men are going to become very good and which are likely to be only passable.

DMS: And it’s your belief that what? That Ledger was one of those who would become very good?

COSTAS: Hell, I knew that about him before he went to Ranger school. No, what I saw in Joe during his time in my company is that he was going to be great. Not good but truly great. You don’t see his kind very often, not unless you’ve been in a lot of war zones. I have been in a lot of war zones and I can tell you right now that Joe Ledger is a hero waiting to happen.

DMS: A hero?

COSTAS: Trust me, if you can inspire him, if you can tap into the core of that man, into what he believes then by God he’ll show you things you’ll never see in another soldier. I guarantee it.

“Hero indeed,” Grace muttered, turning up her nose at Costas’s effusiveness; but as she immersed herself in Ledger’s life something shifted inside of her. She reread it, then slapped the report cover shut. “Bollocks.”

Ledger was a good fighter, that much was certain, but with all the DMS had to face could they risk having someone like him aboard? The soldier in her wanted to have nothing to do with him. And yet, the woman in her wasn’t so sure. On the screen Ledger hammering away at his computer keyboard, his face intent, his blue eyes bright and-

“Stop it, you stupid cow,” she said aloud, and turned away from the screen for a moment. This was counterproductive bullshit. This was a side effect of being alone in a lonely job in a foreign country. This was hormones and biology and that was all.

But when she turned back to the screen Joe’s eyes were still as blue.

She punched a button that brought up an Internet display screen that mimicked whatever Ledger was looking at, and Grace forced herself to concentrate on the prion information he was reading. The dry complexity of the medical information was a relief and she could feel the small flare of emotionality subside within her. Grace sipped her Diet Coke and slammed the can down on her desk. There was no way she was going to approve him coming on board. No way in hell.