Patient Zero

Chapter Sixty-Four

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 3:32 A.M.

“MA’AM, I’VE LOST the signal,” reported the tech who was hunched over the communications board inside one of the ambulances. He tried another line, then another. “Cell lines are out, too. We haven’t yet set up the landline to ops. We’re blind and deaf. Everything’s being jammed by a very powerful transmitter. Has to be military grade, nothing else could cut us off this bad.”

Grace bent forward to look at his display and then tapped her earpiece, heard only a hiss.

“Ma’am,” called the tech again, “right before we lost our feeds audio picked up a change in ambient sound. I think the refrigeration units have all shut down. I got ten seconds of thermals before we went blind and it looks like the temperature inside the building is spiking.”

Allenson, Grace’s second in command, gave her a sharp look. “Mr. Church said that Captain Ledger requested backup in silence plus ten minutes.”

She turned to the tech. “Do we have that landline yet?”

“Negative. ETA five minutes.”

“Bugger that.” To Allenson she said, “This whole thing is wrong, I think Echo Team is in trouble.”

Allenson grinned. “Alpha Team is locked and loaded, ma’am.”

Grace pointed to a technician sitting in front of a screen that showed nothing but white noise. “You! You’re a runner. Find Mr. Church, tell him we have a total communications blackout. Apprise him of the temperature change. We need a full-team hit and we need it five minutes ago. Tell him the next sound he hears will be Alpha Team kicking in the door. Move!”

The runner leaped out of the van and tore across the parking lot to the fake cable news van parked outside the gates.

Grace Courtland snatched up her helmet. “Let’s go.”

By the time the team was assembled at the door one of her men had a fast-pack charge beside the knob. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled and everyone fanned back as the doorknob blew apart. The door swung violently open but beyond it was a flat gray wall. The agent pounded his fist on it. “Steel plates. Going to take a hell of a big bang to get through that.”

Then a moment later there was a second and much heavier explosion, but this one was deep inside the building. It shattered the glass in the windows and sent a shiver through the walls, then subsided into a threatening silence.

“That was inside,” Allenson said.

Another sound rent the air as heavy steel shutters slammed into place over every window in the building. Grace let out a string of vile curses and hoped that Church had the backup coming fast.

“Make me a hole, Corporal,” she snarled, but the man was already sliding the pencil detonators into place.

God, she prayed as they backed away from the explosives, don’t let this be another St. Michael’s. For one brief moment she closed her eyes and imagined Joe Ledger being dragged down by a sea of hungry white-faced ghouls. Please, God!

The side of the building exploded.