Chapter 38

A wise man fears and departs from evil: but the fool rages and is confident.

—Proverbs

 

Rico tapped Scholz on the shoulder to get her attention as the rest of the patrons got to their feet behind them. Their focus, like his own, was the smoking rubble of Mexico City that a shaky camera operator broadcast to the bar screen.

“Are you sure your game’s still on?” he asked her.

Rico called up the volume, and a hysterical reporter offscreen tried to deliver the story of her career.

“. . . worst predictions came true. The controversial evacuation that followed Earthquake Watch’s timely warning has undoubtedly saved millions of human lives. Once again, I’m Michelle Spencer, live from our airliner over Mexico City. We are witnessing live an earthquake that has just flattened the center of the most populous city in the world. Earthquake Watch was right, and as a result millions of people are alive tonight, though homeless.

“Fewer than half of the citizens of Mexico City evacuated reluctantly after geologists confirmed an eight-point-oh buildup in progress and the U.N. moved armored units in to clear the Zocaló. Critics of the evacuation warned that billions of production dollars would be lost and looting would be a ‘feeding frenzy.’ Both points are now moot.

“Many of the city’s poor stayed in defiance of the evacuation order, and rescue teams worldwide will have the task of digging them out. Fortunately, hundreds of volunteer rescue workers are on hand, but considering that millions of lives are in question, that number may prove insignificant. Property loss, from our vantage point, is immeasurable. It’s horrible, the worst I’ve ever seen. But, again, thanks to the Earthquake Watch early warning system, millions of lives have been spared. . . .”

The news clicked off, and the two suits behind Rico and Scholz pressed closer.

“White House requests your immediate return to the States, Colonel.”

Rico didn’t move, not even his lips.

“Isn’t babysitting cripples kind of light duty for war whores like yourselves?”

“You’re in no condition to piss me off, Colonel.”

“What about my boy? And Sonja?”

Scholz shifted her weight slightly, and Rico knew she was ready to play.

“Don’t do it, lady,” the other suit said. “You’re booked on the same flight.”

“I’m no lady,” Scholz said. She held her drink in the “throw-and-go” posture.

“My boy and Sonja,” Rico insisted.

“I don’t know anything about that, Colonel. My orders are to move you two immediately to the airport. This comes directly from The Man. Let’s go.”

Rico felt the unmistakable press of an airgun muzzle against his ribs and decided against pointing out to the contractor that, since the President was a woman, orders no longer came from The Man. He glanced down and saw an eight-shot disposable Hornet convincing him that the contractor could say whatever he liked. One suit by the door jacked a high-pressure hose into the side of his briefcase, and jacked the other end into the hardware under his coat. All of the patrons showed their hands on tabletops without further encouragement.

Eight shots apiece for these two, Rico thought. But that guy at the door could take the walls out of this place.

Rico didn’t hear the dart that dropped Mr. Briefcase, but he glimpsed the white blur as it streaked across the mirror. In the same instant, three more white-feathered darts pricked the necks of the other three suits. Each of them swatted out of reflex at the bug that bit them, and each crumpled to the floor without a twitch. The rest of the patrons studied their drinks very carefully.

“What the hell . . . ?” Scholz asked.

Spook, Al and two strangers smiled, tapping small blow-guns in their palms. Rico picked up one suit’s Hornet, and Scholz grabbed another. Father Free slid his blowgun into his back pocket.

“Handy, aren’t they?” he said, then laughed. “Of course, it’s just an artifact. For display purposes only.”

“Thanks, Spook,” Rico said. “Listen, the lid’s off. We need your help and we need it right away.”

“Does this have to do with that warehouse standoff in Mexico City?” Spook asked. “And the sudden arson problem we’re having here in La Libertad?”

Rico and Scholz raised eyebrows at the same time.

“What do you know about that?” Rico asked.

Father Free smiled, his perfect teeth brilliant. He pulled a faded white collar out of another pocket, and slipped it into place in his shirt.

“I know that the Agency has been sweating blood over a Peace and Freedom subcontractor that took a warehouse away from the Children of Eden,” he said. “I know that you managed to pull off an earthquake alert and evacuation, and that you lost Yolanda and a dozen other high-level contacts.” His gaze took in Rico’s bruises and stitches. “I know about ViraVax.”

“Lost Yolanda?” Rico asked. “What . . . ?”

“Sorry,” Father Free said, “I thought you knew. One of her own people, apparently, in an alley in Mexico City. I just heard, myself.”

In the few seconds of stunned silence, Rico heard the whup-whup-whup of ceiling fans and rifle fire from down the street.

“The kids wouldn’t be here now without her,” Rico whispered. “Neither would I.”

“‘She should have died hereafter,’” Spook quoted, “ ‘there would have been a time for such a word.’ I don’t know why you didn’t square with me in the first place.”

Father Free turned to the mirror and hand-signaled someone behind it. Two women came out of the back to help Al and the others quietly drag the suits through a doorway behind the mirror. Rico glimpsed another half-dozen people back there, intent on the holo projections shimmering in front of them. They took absolutely no notice of the unconscious men dragged through the room and into a closet behind them.

“I don’t know what was in that warehouse,” Spook said. “But it cost the Agency plenty—people, contacts, money. And favors. All favors, even from me. Even, it appears, from you.” His gaze flicked over Rico’s stitches, scabs and scars. “And now, Yolanda.”

One of Spook’s men tossed him the briefcase and the automatic. He tossed it to Rico.

“Here,” he said. “You might need it.”

“Thanks,” Rico said, “but this enemy can’t be shot. We’ve got ourselves a Jonestown Special.”

Father Free’s blue eyes glittered a hard acknowledgment. The Agency considered a Jonestown to be the destruction of an isolated population from within. A Jonestown Special was destruction of unlimited population, also from within a single group. A nation- or worldwide poison or plague.

“Special?”

Father Free looked to Scholz for confirmation, and got it.

“Absolutely,” she said. She nodded to indicate the toll of earthquake destruction being run on the peel. “This could be every human being on the face of the earth.”

“We need a broadcast team with satlink capability,” Rico said. “We need security, transportation and quarantine facilities for a virologist and two kids.”

“All we were going to do was snatch the kids and this virologist and hide them out in a safe house up in the Jaguars,” Scholz said, “Now it looks like a nuclear sub would be about right.”

Father Free smiled.

“I can still help you,” he said. “I don’t believe that St. Elias is booked up this afternoon. She’s not nuclear, but she’s reliable. Now, this ‘Special.’ There’s no antidote?”

“The virologist says she can neutralize it,” Scholz said. “But there’s production. Then distribution. She also says this thing spreads very fast, and that we can’t beat it. With luck, we can outrun it.”

“How fast?”

“Two days max, from exposure to Meltdown.”

“Meltdown? What do you mean, ‘Meltdown’ ?”

“Spontaneous human combustion,” Scholz said. “You get a fever and you melt off your bones and you burn up. Something to do with virions and the mitochondria, Chang says.”

“That’s the source of the fires around town?”

“Probably,” Rico said. “ViraVax tainted their ritual water supply, so they’d all start going up on Easter.”

“Why didn’t we hear about this before?”

Rico swallowed hard, but didn’t let Spook’s accusing gaze stop him.

“Because I buried it,” Rico said.

His face, a painful mask behind the stitches and the gels, betrayed no expression.

“It killed Red,” he added. “Then I followed orders and buried it.”

“Will you let your guilt bury you, Colonel?” Father Free asked. “And the rest of us along with you?”

“Lay off, Father,” Scholz snapped. “Yeah, we had orders.”

She put her nose to Rico’s nose.

“But we didn’t want every tinhorn politician with a thick wallet to invest in the idea, either. Remember?”

“Yeah,” Rico nodded, “I remember. And that goddamn committee’s doing the same thing….”

Father Free cleared his throat.

“My sympathies,” he said, his voice flat. “The facility shouldn’t have been built in the first place.”

“You cashed our check when we consulted you on the communications job,” Rico said. “Let’s get back to the bug. The virologist says it’s designed for contagion. Besides the ritual water, it’s in vials of childhood inoculations, millions of doses, that’s what’s in the warehouse.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Father Free asked. “If you can’t snatch your cargo, destroy it. That earthquake did us all a favor. It’s destroyed.”

“Not this cargo,” Rico said. “Open one of those vials, and anyone within ten meters is dead in two days. You’d have to nuke it to stop it, and nobody wanted to nuke Mexico City.”

“And this earthquake just turned it loose?”

“Exactly.”

The busy room had grown quiet, hotter, thick.

“What’s the survivability?”

“Zero,” Rico said. “Chang computes the maximum exposure-to-Meltdown time at forty-eight hours. Infants and old people can go in two or three.”

Father Free blinked a couple of times, as though to clear his vision.

“Two hours?”

“Two hours. In two hours your baby gets sick. In ten minutes it melts down and burns before your very eyes. . . .”

“. . . And who wouldn’t pick up a sick baby?” Scholz said.

“How much of that time are they . . . can they spread this thing?”

“Don’t know,” Rico said. “But if you’re exposed, you’re contagious within moments and dead within two days.”

“Could you nuke it?”

Father Free’s voice was soft, smooth. Rico was sure that Spook thought what he thought—if someone could nuke it, they probably would.

“Too late,” Rico said. “That air’s contaminated already. According to Chang, it rides on steam, smoke, dust, runs off in rain and collects where the poor collect water for their beans. If one vial’s broken, it’s too late for Mexico City.”

“So, it’s loose here, too,” Father Free said. “If we can’t fight, we run. But where?”

“Underwater,” Rico said. “Underground. The space station or a biosphere. The only solution is to get ahead of it and seal off.”

“Exactly,” Scholz said. “Seal yourself off completely from the outside world. Then you have to stay inside for at least two months—air, water, septic, food . . . the works.”

Father Free’s Sidekick interrupted with three bell-like tones.

“Yes?” he answered, and triggered the “unscramble” toggle.

“Targets on the move,” the machine reported. “Pan-Pacific Lancer out of hangar and fueling. Flight crew arriving.

“Check,” Spook said. “Position Team Two for intercept. We’ll want that plane, too.”

“Roger that. Secure targets and aircraft.”

Two scratches of a microphone signaled, “Out.”

He’s pretty casual about who listens in, Rico thought. Or he’s that well shielded.

“What’s up?” Colonel Toledo asked.

Father Free smiled and tried to look humble.

“Thanks to a few whispers, I anticipated certain of your needs,” he said. His voice hardened.

“I did not anticipate such extreme needs. Not even with Yolanda on the inside.”

It was Rico’s turn to blink.

“Yolanda worked for you?”

Father Free shrugged.

“Not exactly,” he said. “We . . . well, we go way back. She worked for you, of course. And for the Peace and Freedom people. We do . . . did . . . some private work from time to time, just the two of us. . . .”

Father Free’s jaw muscles twitched as he clenched his teeth. He motioned the Colonel and Scholz into the office behind the mirror.

The Colonel had made it his business to survey Father Free’s office, as well as his two stories of “storage” and “living quarters,” years ago. Spook had upgraded his personal electronics considerably since then.

Same four walls, Rico thought. A lot more sophistication.

He realized, now, where the Peace and Freedom party got its electronics. El Indio wasn’t their supplier, after all.

Shit, he thought, El Indio’s probably another “private partner.”

Rico realized, now, why Yolanda rescued him after the embassy bombing—a favor from his old ethics professor, Spook.

Yolanda and Spook!

No wonder the Peace and Freedom people were gaining popular ground. Yolanda had kissed Rico as he prepared to break his son out of ViraVax. He tried to recall the press of her body against his, but he’d worn coveralls and a tool belt, so there had been no body-pressing. All he remembered clearly was her perfume, “Poison,” and the cooling of her kiss on his lips.

He could imagine how bad Spook wanted the men who killed her. That wouldn’t be possible now. Nor necessary.

“Which of our needs did you anticipate?” Rico asked.

“Your kids, of course,” Father Free said. “And escape. Whisper told me that somebody was taking them someplace for study. I didn’t like the sound of it. I presume that whisper came from you.”

“It did.”

“You could have ordered their study yourself, Colonel,” the priest said. His steely eyes glittered in his dark face. “Remember, Colonel, I’ve known Harry since birth. Sonja, nearly as long. Frankly, Colonel, you’ve been in the bottle for the last ten years, and I didn’t trust your judgment. Instead of studying the possibility, I made some arrangements.”

Rico froze. That was the sting of things as he’d come to see them in the past few weeks, but the verbal slap nearly drew blood coming from Spook.

“He doesn’t deserve that from you, Father,” Scholz growled.

“You don’t know the first thing about it, Scholz,” Father Free said. “Those kids deserve having me to watch out for them; that’s who deserves what.”

“Where were you on Good Friday, when they needed you?”

“At the dam, with Yolanda,” he said. “One step behind our hero, here. Check this out.”

Colonel Toledo shifted his position as a wall peel came alight across from Spook’s desk. Rico’s body turned to fire when he moved, as the abrasions and stitches cracked their crusts and tore the pink new flesh underneath. He tried to slow down, relax. . . .

And saw Major Ezra Hodge on the peel, leaving the embassy with a well-stuffed dufflebag over his shoulder.

“What’s this?” Rico asked.

Hodge tossed the duffle into his jeep and drove through the gates in a big hurry.

“That’s what I was wondering, until I heard your story,” Father Free said. “As you know, I have a significant interest in the harbor.”

“He went to the harbor?” Scholz asked.

“Right. Pier Nine.”

“Isn’t that where the DEA keeps that sailboat?” Rico asked.

“Right again,” Father Free said. “It’s been in my interest to know what goes down on that boat. . . .”

He signaled one of the techs, and the image on the peel switched to the interior of the Kamui Hodge filled the screen as he followed his duffle through the hatch, then took out a small package.

“Motion- and voice-activated,” Father Free explained. “Utilizing their own alarm system. I thought maybe he was diabetic, or something—too old-fashioned to accept the pancreas repair.”

Hodge unwrapped the paper around a slapshot, read it, ate it, then hit himself in the thigh. Rico noted the panic on the man’s face when he blew the shot.

“He’s planning a trip,” Rico said. “That’s clear. And I’ve seen his records; Hodge doesn’t have diabetes, or anything else.”

“Junkie?” Spook asked.

“Intramuscular injection,” Scholz explained. “He didn’t need a vein. It’s like the old setups for nerve gas, remember?”

“And what was on that paper he ate?” Rico asked.

The three of them stared at each other for a moment.

“He has an antidote, doesn’t he?” Scholz asked.

“That would be my guess,” Spook said.

By then Hodge had left the frame of the camera. They heard him locking up topside, and then the camera switched off.

Rico pushed himself to his feet.

“We’ve got to get Hodge now” he said. “And if that’s an antidote . . .”

“Father!” one of the techs hollered, pointing to a blank screen in front of her. The woman was so shaken she couldn’t speak right away; she just continued pointing a shaking finger at a blank screen.

“What is it, Susanna?”

“Mexico City,” she said. “I . . . it’s gone!”

“Earthquake,” Rico explained. “We saw it on the bar screen.”

“No,” Susanna said, standing, still unable to turn from the blank screen. “Not the earthquake. This was a flash and fireball. The pulse wiped out our feed. My God, Father, twenty million people!”