The Serpent's Kiss

60

Derek and Jill were working their way slowly into the downtown area. It felt like they had caught ever stop light, which meant every block. Derek had taken off his earphones and booted up his tablet PC, checking his e-mail every few minutes. His spirits were rock bottom. They weren’t going to make it. Again. He could smell dead bodies. His mind flashed on scenes from northern Iraq, women and children gassed to death by Saddam Hussein. He closed his eyes, willing the memories away, praying to God he wouldn’t add more to his morbid collection of mental images today. He felt ill, stomach churning, head pounding.

Derek’s phone buzzed. He snatched it up. “Beckwith?”

“Beckwith here,” she said. “I’m uploading all these files now. There are a lot of them.”

“Thanks.” He clicked off and said, “Pull over.”

Jill slipped the car into a spot on Woodward Avenue in front of a restaurant called Union Street Station. Derek already had his tablet computer up and running and was downloading the files.

“How—”

”Satellite link-up,” he said. “Okay, here we go. Christ, there are 73 of them.” He started clicking on the attachments, all scenarios created by the Working Group of the Wayne State University Center for Biological and Chemical Terrorism Research. Click, click, click. One after the other, just as fast as he could.

“What time is it?” he snapped.

“3:59,” Jill said, voice hollow.

“Shit. Shit, shit… there—”

The file read: