Patient Zero

Chapter Sixty

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 2:54 A.M.

WE WATCHED THE boat explosion on Dietrich’s laptop.

“Sweet,” Skip murmured. We were parked on the side of the road three quarters of a mile from the plant, lights off.

“Christ,” complained Bunny, “I’m boiling in this shit.”

“Life’s hard, ain’t it?” said Top, who was sweating as much as the rest of us but didn’t seem to care. I’m pretty sure that if Top Sims had an arrow stuck in his kidney he wouldn’t let the pain show on his face. Some guys are like that.

“Okay,” yelled Gus Dietrich, “the 911 call just went through.”

“Light ’er up,” I told him, and the driver fired up the engine and punched on the lights and sirens.

So far our hastily formed plan was going well. One of Church’s staff engineers had rigged a remote piloting unit to the cigarette boat that had been confiscated when the task force took the warehouse, and they’d gotten two store mannequins from God only knows where and strapped them into the front seats. Dietrich worked the remote controls and made quite a show by zigzagging the boat through the anchored pleasure craft and generally causing a ruckus. If there were any witnesses they would report a drunk driving like a lunatic. The cigarette was loaded to the gunnels with gas cans and small C4 charges which Dietrich radio-detonated as soon as the boat struck the dock. It was way too big an explosion, more like something you see in movies, and it was damned impressive.

Within minutes we were being frantically waved through the open gates by the security guard. Our driver angled left and headed toward the big red-painted emergency standpipe and as we squealed to a halt everyone piled out. The second engine pulled closer to the dock and we had calls in for three more engines to join us. That would put a lot of men and women in identical coats and helmets running around. A few of them would even be actual firefighters. Police cars seemed to appear by the dozen-state and local. I knew that Grace was in one of them, and Alpha Team was peppered throughout the rest. Church was in a command van parked around the bend in the access road, and the special ops teams were in vans behind him. Close, but would they be close enough if we encountered heavy resistance?

As we piled out, Bunny and Top went directly to the standpipe, passing the line of parked cars and trucks that had been spotted by the spy satellite and helo surveillance. Skip and Ollie pulled a hose off the truck and began unlimbering it as they walked backward toward the pipe.

“Camera on my two o’clock,” I heard Bunny say in my earpiece. “Slow rotation on a ninety-degree swing.”

“Copy that. I’m coming in. Give me some cover.” They took their cue and began fitting a hose nozzle to the pipe. I closed on the group, watching the camera out of the corner of my eye. As soon as it swung toward the main part of the lot where all the activity was in full swing I dashed forward and flattened against the wall in what I judged to be the dead spot beneath the box-style camera. When I ran to the wall a firefighter moved from a point of concealment behind the door of the engine and hurried quickly over to take my place. We repeated this process four more times and then Echo Team was all scrunched up against the wall and real firefighters were attaching the hose to the pipe.

“Skip eyes on the camera,” I said. Bunny removed a sensor from his pocket and ran it over every square inch of the door and then showed me the readout.

“Standard alarm contact switch,” he said. “It’ll go off when we open the door.”

“Perfect. Ollie, go to work.” Ollie had volunteered to tackle the lock, which was a heavy industrial affair. He had to earn his pay, but in less than two minutes he had it unlocked. He kept the door closed, though, because the alarm would ring the second we opened it. If there was no one directly inside then our carnival act was going to pay off, but if even one person was inside then we were screwed as far as stealth went.

“Okay,” I said into the mike, “call the cops.”

The signal was relayed and a big-shouldered state trooper came loping over. I motioned to him to slow his walk so that the panning camera clearly caught him moving toward the door, and then as soon as it panned away I waved him in and he ran the last few yards. I turned and pounded my fist hard on the door for three seconds and then yanked open the door and we piled inside. Alarms began jangling loudly overhead. As soon as it closed, Ollie turned and reengaged the lock; and the trooper took his cue and continued to beat on the door, shaking it in its frame.

Immediately the five of us fanned out into a half-circle, guns out; but we needn’t have bothered-the room in which we stood was big, dirty, and empty. And cold. Like the meatpacking plant had been, maybe thirty-five, forty degrees with damp air and black mold on the walls. The floor was old tile and had a big gutter down its middle, and to our left was a low stone wall beyond which were oversized showers. There was a row of heavy pegs on which were still hung a couple of old oilskin jackets. This was where the crab fishermen must have come in after offloading their catch, to shower the seawater and crab gook off their foul-weather gear before heading into the interior of the plant. There was a line of foul-smelling toilet stalls to our right and the wall in front of us was set with rows of lockers. A corridor broke left past the lockers. All of it was visible in the piss-yellow glow of flickering fluorescent lights.

I signaled Skip to watch the hall while the rest of us shucked our coats and helmets and stowed them out of sight in a shower stall.

Skip signaled us by breaking squelch and then hand-signed that someone was coming. We all faded back. Ollie and Skip went into toilet stalls and crouched on the seats; Top and Bunny hid in shower stalls and I crouched down behind the low concrete wall. I could only see around the edge of it and there were shadows behind me so I was pretty well hidden. I had my silenced Beretta ready in a two-hand grip as I strained to hear the footsteps through the jangling alarm.

Right around the time we heard the running footsteps the alarm stopped. The trooper continued to pound on the door and now he was shouting, too, sounding genuinely outraged that no one had come to check out the fire. Then a man stepped into view with an AK-47 in his hands. He looked nervous and sweaty, his eyes round and white as he stared at the door. He licked his lips and looked around the shower room, but didn’t see anything. We’d been careful not to scuff the floor.

After a moment’s indecision he backpedaled, opened one of the lockers and put the assault rifle inside, closed it and pulled a small walkie-talkie from his jacket pocket. As he clicked it on he moved into the spill of weak light from one of the few overhead fluorescents that still worked. He was Middle Eastern, with a receding hairline, short beard, and a beaky nose. “I’m at the back door,” he said into the walkie-talkie, speaking in Waziri, a dialect from southern Iran. I could just about understand him. “No the door is locked but I think the firemen want to get in. They are banging on the door.” He listened for a few moments, but the voice on the other end was too garbled for me to understand. “Okay,” he said, and clicked off the radio.

In very good English he yelled: “All right, all right, I’m coming!” He pushed the door open and the big state trooper filled the doorway with his bulk and shone his light right into the man’s face.

“Didn’t you hear me knocking, sir? Didn’t you hear the explosion? How can you not be aware that half the fire companies in the county are in your parking lot?” As ordered, the trooper went immediately into an outraged tirade, which provoked a defensive reaction in the other man, and within seconds the two of them were locked in a screaming match. It was clear the Iranian was regretting opening the door, but he was caught up in his role now, playing the part of a clueless and aggrieved worker who wants no part of something that happened on the docks. He made a lot of noise about being a supervisor for a crew mapping out renovations for a building that had already been sold. He shouted names and phone numbers for the police to call. He also told the cop to get the damn light out of his face; and he had to repeat that three times before the trooper did. Both the Iranian and the trooper could yell like fishwives. I checked my watch. The argument had lasted two minutes. Any second now another trooper would call the big guy away and they’d allow the “supervisor” to go about his business; and sure enough, I heard Gus Dietrich calling the cop away.

“The fire marshal is going to need you to sign a release form,” the trooper yelled.

“Sure, sure, fine. Don’t harass me. This is bullshit. Here is the card for the lawyer who is handling things. He will be happy to handle whatever needs to be done.”

The trooper snatched the card out of the Iranian’s fingers and stormed off. It was all very impressive, with exactly the right amount of indignation.

The Iranian pulled the door shut again and double-checked the lock. He keyed his walkie-talkie again and in rapid Waziri relayed what was happening. “Okay,” he said at length, “I’m coming back.” He pocketed the radio, cast one last look around, retrieved his AK-47 from the locker, and headed back along the hallway. I waited a full minute after the sound of his footfalls vanished before I stood up. The others crept out of hiding to join me.

“Skip, you watch the hall again,” I whispered. “You see so much as a cockroach you break squelch twice. Top, Bunny, I want you both to hold this position. Ollie, you’re with me. Code names here on out. Small arms only.”

They nodded and we began moving. Skip dropped down to a shooter’s kneel using one of the rows of lockers as cover. There was enough light to see, but only just; and if it went lights-out we had night vision as backup. Bunny positioned himself behind the low wall so that it would serve as a bunker if we got chased. Top faded to the other side of the big room and vanished into a bank of shadows.

Ollie looked down the shadowy corridor. “Clear,” he murmured. We set off into the belly of the beast.