Patient Zero

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Crisfield, Maryland / Wednesday, July 1; 5:01 A.M.

CHURCH DIDN’T ASK me if I was okay. He leaned against the fender of a DMS Humvee and listened as I described everything that had happened in the plant. Around us the DMS operatives and their colleagues from half the civil and federal agencies in the phone book were in full swing. Stadium floodlights had been erected and it was bright as day even though dawn was an hour off. Except for military choppers the airspace above us was designated a no-fly zone; all business and residential properties had been emptied and the whole population of the area moved to a safe distance. The press was not invited in and the scene was officially designated as the target of a “possible” terrorist attack. According to Homeland’s complicated playbook this meant that it was considered a war zone and that in turn meant the military could call all the shots.

When I was finished he stared at me, lips pursed judiciously, and then nodded. “Has everyone been thoroughly checked and cleared by the doctors?”

“Yes. Lots of scratches and cuts, but no bites. My guys are suffering from exhaustion and everyone’s in some level of shock.”

“You as well?” His gaze was penetrating.

“Absolutely. Physically and mentally. Who wouldn’t be? I got the shakes and every muscle I own feels like it’s been run through a Cuisinart. Hu shot me up with some kind of vitamin cocktail, and I’ve had hot coffee, food, and a protein shake that tasted like a horse pissed in it. I feel like crap, but I’ll live.”

He gave a small nod. Mr. Warmth.

“What’s your assessment of what happened in there this morning?” he asked.

A dozen smartass replies came to mind but I kept a leash on my tongue. I said, “It was a trap and we walked into it.”

“You got out of it.”

“We were getting our asses handed to us in there. I got lucky.”

“Not counting your two encounters with Javad, this is your third combat situation with the walkers with zero casualties from your own team. In this kind of fight, ‘lucky’ can be enough.”

“Not for Grace’s people. Alpha Team got chopped. That’s hard, man.”

“It’s very hard,” he agreed.

“They had the whole place booby-trapped and as soon as we broke into the lab they remote-detonated the computer room. The holding pens for the walkers were rigged to open all at once, which means we tripped some kind of alarm, something we didn’t see. None of that was an accident. Those bastards knew we were coming.”

“Knew that it was today, or knew that it was inevitable?”

It was a crucial question and one that I’d been mulling for the last few hours. Our entire assessment of the enemy and his potential hung on that answer. “I don’t know. They were ready, but not completely. Only two of their bombs went off. The walkers didn’t come after us fast enough or in the right place. It should have been an all-you-can-eat affair, but we survived. And none of the walkers got out. None of that adds up.”

“No,” he said, and I think he was as troubled by these facts as I was.

“Y’know, I don’t know if we’re looking at this thing the right way.”

“I’m pretty certain we’re not.”

“We were expecting to find what, a bunch of guys sitting around a table plotting the downfall of Western civilization? Instead we find what looks to me like a testing facility. These guys were studying the walkers. More so and more thoroughly than down in Delaware.”

“What about your team? Did they perform to your expectations?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I expect a frank and open report, Captain. Now’s not a good time to be coy.”

“I’m not being coy, Church. I’ve known these guys for less than a full day and all of it’s been action. Yesterday they performed superbly. This morning we hit some potholes. Skip Tyler and Ollie Brown both went missing under questionable circumstances and I haven’t had time to fully debrief them. There are some twitchy points about that. Skip claims he was jumped and Tasered from his blind side, but that doesn’t square with the facts because there were only two ways out of that shower room: the door my team came through and the corridor Skip was watching. He says he got zapped and then woke up in a storeroom, managed to cut his bonds and retrieve his weapon, and was then set upon by walkers. Ollie’s story is about the same. Says someone must have opened a door and Tasered him. Both of them have burns on their necks, and most of the guards in the plant carried Tasers.” I didn’t mention the fact that Ollie had nearly blown my head off during the fight. It was something Ollie and I would discuss at some later time.

“So, for a considerable amount of time you can’t account for either of those men?”

“Guess not.”

“By your own statement there was a period where you were alone, which means that Sims and Rabbit were not with you throughout the mission. And you told me that Sergeant Rabbit carried a prisoner back to the entrance and it was he who reported that Tyler was missing. How do you know that he didn’t disable Tyler and then break the prisoner’s neck? We have no immediate proof that the prisoner died as a result of Alpha Team blowing open the door.”

“Are you targeting Echo Team? You think that’s where the mole is?”

“I have no idea where the mole is and I’m questioning everyone,” he said with some edge in his voice. “I’m not a big fan of making assumptions, Captain. Until proven otherwise everyone is under the microscope.”

We glared at each other for a minute, but then I nodded. “Yeah, damn it.”

Church looked away to watch a truck drive by and when he turned back to me he was completely composed.

“Maybe you should broaden your search,” I said. “Instead of just going all Inquisition on everyone in the DMS, you might want to take a close look at whoever sent these people to you. Everyone you have was handpicked, right? Well, then, how sure are you about the people who picked them?”

Church gazed at me for a space and I thought I could hear relays clicking in his head. “Thank you for that suggestion, Captain. It wouldn’t surprise me if the mole was planted simply to bring the DMS down. It might not even be connected with the terrorists. After all, everyone in the intelligence community constantly jockeys for funding and there’s probably some hard feelings from some quarters that we’re getting their funding.”

“And are we?”

“Sure, but there’s a war on and we’re a little more ‘frontline’ than most. Mind you, there is always some political espionage and backstabbing going on in the intelligence services. Always has been, and it’s factored into daily life. The release of the walkers from Room Twelve may have been a terrorist act or it may have been meant to disrupt the DMS and discredit me.”

“Mass murder is a pretty extreme thing to do just to discredit someone. Are you that important?”

He shrugged.

“Well then, let me put it another way: are you that vulnerable?”

I didn’t expect an answer to that but he surprised me. “Not as much as some people might think.” He wouldn’t elaborate on that rather enigmatic remark, however, nor did he return to the topic. His cell beeped and he opened it and listened for a moment and then hung up without comment. “Dr. Hu has finished prepping the prisoner for interrogation.”

As he turned to go I blocked his way. “Slow your roll one minute more. I failed in there, Church. The quiet infil turned into a full-out assault and people died. You hired me on to lead Echo Team and I led them right into a trap.”

He looked at me steadily through the nearly opaque lenses of his glasses. “What do you want to hear? That I’m disappointed? That this was a badly led mission? That I want you to resign?”

I wasn’t going to feed him the script to my own dismissal so I waited.

“Sorry,” he said, “but you’re still Echo Team leader. I don’t have much interest in Monday-morning quarterbacking. So far you’re still four and oh with walkers. Baker and Charlie teams were totally destroyed; Alpha Team has been cut down by half while Echo Team, small as it is, remains intact.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m the man for this job-”

He sighed through his nose. “If you need absolution go see a priest. If you want to decompress, talk to Dr. Sanchez. However, if you feel that you have some need to put things right and balance the scales, then help me stop this thing. Besides last night you told me that you wanted to wait until your team was fully rested. We didn’t, and we can both take blame for that if blame needs to be assigned.”

I said, “What about reinforcements? I thought you had more Echo Team candidates on their way.”

“Some of them have already arrived. They’re being processed at the warehouse as we speak. They’ll be shown the tapes, given the speeches, and when you get back you can start training them.”

“Maybe we should send Top Sims back there now. Him and Bunny. They can start training the new guys.”

“Not Brown and Tyler?”

“I need to have a chat with each of them first.”

His phone rang again and he looked at the display and his mouth twitched with impatience. He flipped his phone open. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said. I raised my eyebrows but Church kept his usual composure. He listened for a few moments, then said, “Mr. President, I have neither the time nor the facts to give you a full briefing. What I can tell you now is that the crab plant appears to have been rigged as a trap. Yes, sir, we sustained heavy casualties.” He gave a bare-bones account of the hit. The President interrupted him at least six times. “We have one prisoner, Mr. President. Yes, that’s correct, just the one. I am on my way to conduct an interview with him right now so time is pressing,” Church listened some more and I could actually see the point at which his patience evaporated. He did something that I had never even heard of anyone doing before, and something I would have thought that not even Church would dare. “Mr. President, with all due respect this conversation is wasting my time. The clock is ticking for my interview and if you keep trying to micromanage this we’re going to lose the best opportunity we have. Now, please, sir, let’s stick to our original agreement. You will be properly informed when I am ready to make my report. Good day, sir.”

He didn’t wait for a reply but simply closed his phone and put it back in his pocket. He saw me goggling at him and said, “What?”

“Church you just bitch-slapped the President of the United States.”

He said nothing,

“Nobody does that. Nobody can do that. How the hell did you-?” Church made a dismissive gesture. “We have an understanding. The DMS was built upon and continues to operate based on that understanding.”

“Care to share what that understanding is?”

“No,” he said.