The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 10:28 A.M.
WE STOOD IN the Liberty Bell Center, which is located on Market Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets in the Old City part of Philly. Because of the task force’s involvement with the event security I’d had a chance to tour the building a few times over the last six months and had a good working knowledge of its layout. The new building had been the centerpiece of a three-hundred-million-dollar makeover of the Independence Mall area, and they’d sunk nearly thirteen million dollars into the center, which opened in October 2003. The place was over thirteen thousand square feet, and was airy, well lighted, and pretty fascinating to any tourist or history buff. The bell itself sits in a glass chamber designed to magnify it so every one of the million-plus yearly visitors has a chance to get a really good look.
I think we all felt somewhat awed by all that it represented. I knew from having taken the tour that this was actually the second bell; the first one was made in the Whitechapel Foundry in England but it cracked shortly after it was cast. A couple of pot-and-pan makers named Pass and Stow recast it from a mixture of copper, tin, and traces of lead, zinc, arsenic, gold, and silver, but the second bell also cracked. That’s the one that we were all looking at. The names Pass and Stow were stamped into the front of the bell. Rudy leaned forward and read the rest of the inscription: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof—Lev. XXV, v. x. By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pensylvania for the State House in Philada.”
“They spelled Pennsylvania wrong,” Skip remarked.
I shook my head. “It was one of a couple of acceptable spellings at the time.”
“Darn thing’s broken,” Bunny said with a grin.
Behind us was a second large display platform but this one was draped with a Stars and Stripes tent, inside of which was the new Freedom Bell. Because this bell was intended to ring on special events it hadn’t been encased in magnifying glass. Time would tell if this one would be crackproof.
These bells symbolized everything for which the DMS had fought, suffered, and died. They were emblematic of the unsullied ideals of freedom, democracy, and fairness. Despite their many flaws the Founding Fathers had been mostly well intentioned. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion. The right to live. Even though those same founders had been unable to unite to abolish slavery and extend equal rights to all people of both sexes, they had at least started the ball rolling. Freedom had rung out across the land, and across the oceans, until its promise, at least, was heard in every country around the world. Without that bravery and optimism we wouldn’t be standing together here. Men and women, black and white, foreign and homegrown, united in a single cause: to take a stand against hate and destruction. Despite my years of practiced cynicism I felt a real stirring of good ol’ red, white, and blue patriotism.
From beside me Rudy said, “It’s a genuine perspective check, isn’t it?”
“Hooah,” Top said softly.
“Major Courtland . . . ?” We turned to see a big man in a beautifully tailored lightweight charcoal suit come striding across the floor, hand out, a smile on his tanned face. I recognized him at once from Grace’s description. Linden Brierly, regional director of the Secret Service. We stepped up to meet him by the podium that had been erected between the display cases. It was a three-step affair heavy with red, white, and blue bunting and bristling with microphones, none of which were currently turned on. I’d checked.
Grace made introductions and offered her hand; Brierly gave it a firm single pump. “Sorry for borrowing the Secret Service as our cover, sir,” she said. “The President thought it would be best under the circumstances.”
Brierly didn’t miss a beat. “Sure, sure, I understand,” he said, though he probably didn’t like it. I wouldn’t if I were in his shoes; but he hadn’t gotten this far in his career by letting sour grapes show on his face. He looked around to confirm that there was no one else in the room except Brierly and Echo Team. “I’ve met your boss. Mr. Deacon.” He paused and his smile became a bit rueful. “Or is it Church? There seems to be some disagreement about that.”
“He prefers to be called Mr. Church.”
“Interesting man,” Brierly said. “I tried to run a background check on him and pretty much had my knuckles beaten with a ruler by the Commander in Chief.”
Grace returned his smile but said nothing, nor did Rudy. I practiced looking like a cigar-store Indian.
Brierly waited a second, then shrugged. “Okay, I get it. No problem, Major. So, tell me what I can do for you?”
Grace and I had agreed that she’d handle Brierly and I’d take Lee, so she dug right in. “Sir,” she said, “we’d like to discuss the candidates you suggested for transfer to the DMS.”
That dialed down the wattage of Brierly’s smile. “Why is that, Major?”
Instead of answering she asked, “What can you tell me about the men you chose to recommend?” She recited eleven names including Sergeant Michael Sanderson, who was one of Dietrich’s security men, and Second Lieutenant Oliver Brown. The others I hadn’t yet met.
I saw Brierly flick a glance across the room at Ollie and then return his gaze to Grace. “Can you be a bit more specific?”
“Just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” she said with a smile.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “And for that you flash a presidential order?”
Grace said nothing.
Brierly sucked his teeth. “Okay,” he said, “you caught me.”
I stiffened, but then he upped the wattage on his smile. “A couple of my recommendations were entirely self-serving, I’ll admit it. Mike Sanderson is the son of an old friend of mine. Mike’s career seemed to stall in place after he left the army and joined the Service. We all thought he’d rise like a meteor but he didn’t make the cut to the presidential detail, and when you miss that step you tend to tread water. I promised his dad I’d look out for him and the DMS seemed like a chance for a fresh start.”
“And Lieutenant Brown?” Grace asked.
Brierly colored. “Well . . . that’s a little more awkward, and I’m not sure if it’s something we should even be talking about.”
“Sir, we’re here on the orders of the President himself.”
Brierly sighed and stared at the empty air between Grace and me for a few seconds, the muscles in the sides of his jaw flexing as he thought it through. We let him. Finally he said, “Okay, but it’s on your head if this information gets out because I’ll damn sure know that it didn’t come from me except right here and right now.” He nodded to himself, the decision made. “Homeland and the Service have done a number of ultra–top secret operations since nine-eleven. Off-the-books stuff, if you follow me.”
“Of course, sir,” Grace said. I nodded. A lot of black ops stuff never makes it onto paper. Plausible deniability is easier without a paper trail.
“Ollie was never in Iraq. That, um, was a cover story. He’s been Delta Force for four years and has been used in over twenty operations. Extreme stuff. Missions that involved military intelligence, the Service, Homeland, and the CIA . . . but more recently, until he was transferred to the DMS, Lieutenant Brown has officially been a Secret Service agent, but one that we’ve had out on loan to the Company.”
“We know he’s with the CIA,” I said. “Are you saying he’s more than just another one of their spooks?”
He grunted. “Captain, until I transferred him he was one of this government’s very best operators. Covert ops, infiltration, and special skills—he has the full package.” Brierly looked past me to where the young man was standing foursquare, staring hard in our direction. “And on top of all that, he’s the best assassin I’ve ever seen.”
El Mujahid
“HOW DO I look?” the Fighter asked.
Ahmed turned in his seat and smiled broadly. “Perfect! Amirah herself would not recognize you!”
El Mujahid leaned over and looked at himself one last time in the Explorer’s rearview mirror. With blue contact lenses, an expert hair dye that gave him wavy red hair, skillfully crafted latex appliances, and makeup that gave him pale skin and a scattering of freckles the Fighter looked like a rawboned young Irishman. Saleem had even used special tape to change the shape and angle of El Mujahid’s nose, giving it a snubbed and uptilted look. Padding in his gums gave him more prominent cheekbones. Even he could not see the man he was beneath the makeup.
“The boy is a wizard,” the Fighter agreed.
“Now . . . there’s one last thing to do before we go,” said Ahmed as he took a small case from the glove compartment, unzipped it and removed a prefilled syringe. The liquid was a luminous green-gold that sparkled in the sunlight. “Roll up your sleeve.”
El Mujahid did so and held out his arm. He didn’t even wince when Ahmed plunged the needle into his flesh and injected the entire contents into him.
“Amirah said that the antidote will be at its strongest in forty minutes,” Ahmed said, “and advises that you release the plague at that point. She said that you should be completely protected, but also said that once you activate the device you should get away as quickly as possible.” He drew a breath. “Besides, things will be getting very violent very quickly.”
El Mujahid looked at his wristwatch. “Then we had better move.”
Ahmed nodded and removed a second syringe from the case and injected himself. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it and gave himself the shot high on his shoulder where it wouldn’t be seen. He put the syringe case back in the glove compartment. He hung a lanyard around his neck to which was clipped a plastic ID holder. It read: PRESS.
“You have only two doses?” the Fighter asked. “What about your woman, Andrea?”
“She’s a woman.” Ahmed spread his hands in a man-of-the-world gesture. “We all make sacrifices.”
El Mujahid nodded. He had made his own sacrifices to the cause where women were concerned.
“There is no God but Allah,” Ahmed whispered.
“And Mohammad is His prophet,” agreed El Mujahid.
Ahmed put the car in gear and drove off.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 11:26 A.M.
BRIERLY TOLD US that he stood behind his decision to send Ollie to us and that he’d stake his reputation on the fact that Ollie was every inch a “true American.” A phrase he used three times. “Look, I have an event to run. The First Lady will be here in a couple of minutes.”
“Mind if we loiter about, sir?” asked Grace.
He frowned at her. “Am I going to have some trouble here today?”
I cut in on that. “Wouldn’t you agree that since nine-eleven there’s been a potential for threat at every major national holiday and political event?”
Brierly studied me for a three-count and then his voice dropped to a less friendly whisper. “Don’t fuck with me, Captain. I got a pretty damned cryptic ‘keep your eyes open’ sort of memo this morning from Washington but it had zero details and I really don’t like being kept in the dark. If your team is here because of a specific threat then I need to know about it and right goddamn now.”
I opened my mouth to reply in kind, but Grace stepped between us and took Brierly by the elbow and led him out of earshot of everyone in the room. They stood with heads bowed together for three minutes and I could see his body becoming more rigid with each passing second. Then he gave a nod and moved toward the door, walking as if his boxers were filled with jagged glass.
“What’d you tell him?” I asked when she rejoined me.
“The truth,” she said. “Or at least as much of it as he needs to know.”
“He didn’t look happy about it.”
“Are you?”
“Point taken.”
“He said he’ll quietly increase the circle of protection around the First Lady. He has a number of agents in plainclothes who can be seeded into the crowd at the ceremony.”
“Good. The more the merrier.”
Another agent entered the chamber a minute later and hurried over to us, introducing himself as Colby, Brierly’s number two. “I’ve been asked to brief you on the on-site security.” He led us to a STAFF ONLY door hidden behind a screen on which the Declaration of Independence was printed. “If we need to remove the First Lady in the event of a crisis, agents will escort her through here and then lock the door behind them. There are offices and other rooms back there and we have a designated secure spot as well as escape routes.”
After he left I dialed the cell number for Robert Howell Lee and, after verifying that the line was secure, identified myself and read the note from the President that ordered everyone to offer complete and immediate assistance to my investigation. He answered that with a long silence and I could imagine him trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I hadn’t told him. I broke into the silence and asked him if he could meet us in the bell chamber.
“What . . . you mean now?” he demanded. “Are you out of your mind, Captain? Do you have any idea what is going on? We have—”
“We can grab a few minutes after the speeches,” I interrupted. “This won’t take long.”
“Can you at least tell me what the hell this is about?”
Grace had returned and she and Rudy were leaning close to eavesdrop on the call. She mouthed the words: “Play the card, Joe.”
So I did. “Yes, sir, we are here representing the Department of Military Sciences.” I let him digest that. Whether he was guilty or innocent it was a hell of a bomb to drop and he had to react.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. There was another pause. “All right, give me a few minutes. I’m on the other side of Independence Mall in the communications center and I have to get someone to cover for me.” He disconnected.
I turned to Rudy. “Well? Did he sound spooked to you?”
He shrugged. “He sounded harried.”
Grace nodded. “Let’s face it; we picked a bloody stupid time to come up here.”
“Can’t catch someone off guard if they have time to prepare,” Rudy said.
She shrugged and I looked over at my team. Ollie’s face was pure hostility and had been ever since he saw that we were there to interview the man who had sent him to the DMS. He eyed me with that cold shooter’s squint and I gave it right back to him. Skip saw the look passing between us and frowned; and he took a half-step back from Ollie as if afraid to get in the way of something. I noticed that Top, Bunny, and Gus were casually looking from them to me, but nobody said anything.
The door behind us opened and a big man entered. He was dressed in the standard navy blue and red tie of the Service. He was every bit as big as Bunny, with thick shoulders, flaming red hair, and an Irish snub nose.
“Who are you?” Dietrich asked sharply, moving to intercept him.
“Special Agent Michael O’Brien,” the man said in surprise, holding out his ID. He held a metal case in the other hand. “I was detailed to check the room before the First Lady’s party moves in here for the speeches.”
Gus checked the ID and called it in while he inspected the metal case. It held the standard electronic scanners and nitrate sniffers that would show if anyone had planted bugs or bombs in the room. Dietrich nodded his approval and handed back the ID.
Dietrich closed his phone and sketched a salute to the agent. “Okay, O’Brien . . . the room’s yours.”
Gault / Outside the Bunker / July 4
THE ROVER SAT in the lee of a stand of palm trees about a hundred yards from the tent that hid the entrance to Amirah’s bunker.
“Now what, sir?” asked the driver. “Is your contact meeting you here?”
“In a way,” Gault said. “Toys? Would you oblige?”
Without a word Toys drew his pistol and shot the driver in the back of the head. The impact knocked the man against the steering wheel and splashed the window with bright blood.
“Sorry, old chap,” Gault said distractedly.
Toys’s face was stone as he removed the clip and replaced the round. He didn’t want to come up a bullet short at some crucial moment. He looked at his watch. “Zeller’s team is still twenty minutes out. Where do you want to wait for him? I don’t like being this exposed.”
Before Gault could answer the sat phone rang and Toys put it on speaker. For a moment Gault’s heart lifted, hoping that it was Amirah, but then the American’s voice barked at them.
“Line?”
“Clear, my friend. How are things going?”
The American’s voice was shaky. “God . . . they’re on to me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“The DMS . . . they’ve sent agents here to interview me.”
“Christ! How did that happen?”
“I don’t know . . . Sebastian, you have to do something.”
Gault almost laughed. “What is it exactly you expect me to do? I’m half a world away.”
“I have to get out. We haven’t been able to find El Mujahid. He could be anywhere! And these agents are right here . . . now.”
“You haven’t found him?” Gault was stunned. “Listen to me, we’re paying you too much money for you to let something this important slip through your hands. Fix this!”
“How? The only way I can bring more assets to bear on this would be to go to my own superiors, and that would land me in federal prison for the rest of my life!”
“Well, I daresay that getting arrested is going to be the least of your problems, wouldn’t you think?” Gault’s voice was cold.
“What should I do?”
“Make whatever calls you have to make to let the proper authorities know about the threat. Call the DMS. Tell them that you received an anonymous tip, something like that. Tell them that there is a biological threat. Just for God’s sake don’t mention me, and try not to implicate yourself. Maybe they can stop the Fighter before he can open the bloody gates of hell. Then get as far away as you can. An island somewhere. If this thing is released then an island is the only chance you’ll have.”
“God . . .”
“I’m about to clear up my end of things. I suggest you do the same. Be a hero. Save the day.”
The American mumbled something that Gault thought was a Hail Mary, and then the line went dead.
“Bloody hell,” he said, staring out through the bloodstained windshield. “The man’s a coward and a fool.”
“You get what you pay for,” Toys said with an irritated sigh. He looked at his watch. “There’s still sixteen minutes before Zeller’s team reaches the Bunker. We can’t just sit here.”
“No,” agreed Gault. They got out of the vehicle and drew their pistols. Nothing moved, so they moved quickly and quietly toward the line of tents by the mountain wall. The camp appeared to be deserted, but as they darted from the shelter of one tent to another they found four corpses lying in a row, their hands and ankles bound, their throats cut. Their blood had soaked into the desert sand and flies buzzed around them. They were all men on Gault’s payroll.
Toys snorted. “So much for the element of surprise.”
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday July 4; 11:47 A.M.
SPECIAL AGENT O’BRIEN completed his sweep of the center, packed his gear back into the metal case and stowed it under the podium. Linden Brierly entered from another door and with him was a contingent of grim-faced Secret Service agents and at least four members of my old task force, and following them were half the members of Congress, a couple dozen assorted local politicians, and the First Lady and the VP’s wife. We faded back against the wall and tried to blend into the woodwork the way the Secret Service are supposed to do. I got some strange looks from my former task force teammates, but no one broke protocol to catch up on old times.
Robert Howell Lee had not yet arrived. I looked at Grace, who shrugged. “Give him time,” she said; but there was no time. Brierly, looking stressed and flushed, was trying to guide the ladies to their spots between the two bells, but the women were not cooperating. They were pausing to glad-hand everyone and engage in chitchat while outside the press photographers were snapping pictures through the big glass windows; and beyond the press a veritable sea of people waited for the festivities to commence. Eventually they let about two hundred civilians into the room, which meant that everyone was packed like sardines.
I glanced around. Top and Ollie were directly across from where we stood; Bunny and Skip were on my three o’clock and Gus on our nine.
“This is going to be a bloody circus,” Grace said under her breath. “Brace yourself . . . I think everyone in a suit is about to make a longwinded speech.”
“Swell.”
The First Lady, looking very stylish in a pretty dress and an absurd hat, mounted the steps to the podium and tapped a microphone, making the usual “Is this on” remark which, strangely, got a laugh. I saw Special Agent O’Brien standing by the far door, slowly scanning the crowd. Our eyes met and he gave me a single, curt nod and then his eyes shifted away. Weird thing was, he was smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Secret Service agent smile. Not on the job.
As the First Lady launched into her speech I scanned the crowd looking for Robert Howell Lee, but my eyes kept flicking back to O’Brien. That smile bothered me.
Gault / The Bunker
GAULT RADIOED his assault team to let them know he and Toys were proceeding inside. “If you don’t hear from us in ten minutes come in hard and fast.”
“We’ll be there,” assured Captain Zeller.
Then Gault and Toys entered the shallow cave that led to the Bunker’s hatch. They encountered no one but they weren’t fooled and both men kept their pistols ready. Toys stood guard while Gault accessed the entry keypad that was hidden in the wall. He didn’t use the standard code. Amirah was too clever for that. Instead he entered a number sequence that bypassed the security using a back door he’d written into the security software. The new code disabled all external video scanners, including the ones in the cave and the monitors that watched the back door. Zeller’s team would now be able to approach unseen.
Gault punched in a second code and a door swung open. It wasn’t the big airlock that swung open; instead, to his left, a tall, slender ridge of rock slid upward on silent hydraulics to reveal a narrow passage. No one, not even Amirah, knew about this entrance.
As the door opened to his command Gault felt another fragment of his confidence return. There were a number of things Amirah didn’t know about the Bunker. After all, it wasn’t really her facility.
It belonged to Gault.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 11:59 A.M.
I LEANED CLOSE to Grace. “Call me paranoid, but I’m getting a weird vibe from that agent over there.” I told her where to look and she glanced surreptitiously at O’Brien and then flipped open her phone to call in a request for a physical description of Special Agent Michael O’Brien.
“Description matches,” she said, but from the expression on her face she clearly was getting the same bad feeling. Into the phone she said, “Transfer me to Director Brierly’s secure channel.”
Across the room I saw Brierly’s head swivel around to find us. “Sir,” said Grace, “this may be nothing but Captain Ledger has some concerns about one of the attending agents. O’Brien. Big red-haired bloke by the press entrance.”
We watched Brierly turn. “Michael O’Brien? He’s part of the team sent from D.C. Do you want him removed?”
“If you can do it quietly,” she said, and I winced. The Secret Service could do just about anything quietly. The word “secret” wasn’t there for show, but I understood what Grace was doing. She was putting the onus on Brierly to handle something correctly and we could learn a lot from the way he played it.
“Stand by,” he said, and switched channels. Almost immediately two of his agents began making their way around the perimeter of the room toward O’Brien.
My spider sense was going haywire now. I told Grace to get Brierly back on the line.
ON THE PODIUM the First Lady launched into a crushingly dull speech that was apparently going to chronicle the history of the Liberty Bell from the moment someone cooked up the idea, minute by minute, to today. “In 1752,” she intoned, “the Pennsylvania Assembly ordered a two-thousand-pound bell to place in the steeple of the new State House—what we now call Independence Hall.”
One of the approaching agents reached O’Brien and bent to whisper in the man’s ear. It must have been couched as a repositioning order because O’Brien merely nodded and began moving toward the exit which was directly behind him. The ranks of reporters made it necessary for him to thread his way through and the two other agents followed.
“He’s not bolting,” Grace said. “Maybe you’re wrong.”
“If I am I’ll apologize,” but I was still watching O’Brien.
“The order for the bell was sent to the Whitechapel Foundry in England,” continued the First Lady, “and noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell and to inscribe it with these historic words: ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.’ Sadly that first bell cracked shortly after it was mounted and a replacement bell was—”
The First Lady kept speaking but something she had said jolted me as my brain replayed those words.
. . . noted metalsmith Thomas Lester was contracted to cast the first liberty bell . . .
“And today we will be unveiling a new bell, designed and cast by Andrea Lester—who is with us today.” She indicated a small, unsmiling woman in a yellow pantsuit. “Ms. Lester is the last descendant of the original bell maker and is a resident of North Carolina. She is here with us today to help dedicate this new—”
My mind was reeling. Rudy must have caught it, too; he turned and was staring wide-eyed at me. He mouthed the word: “Bellmaker.”
Thomas Lester. The metalsmith who made the original Liberty Bell.
His descendant Andrea Lester, maker of the new bell.
Lester . . . the bell maker!
Holy Christ! Aldin had told us, but he hadn’t told us enough.
I saw Andrea Lester glance very quickly from the First Lady, to the doorway where Agent O’Brien had paused, his hand on the glass door. He turned and looked back into the room, straight at Andrea Lester. The agents with him put their hands on his upper arms to try to move him along quietly; not wasting to make a scene.
I grabbed Grace’s arm so hard she flinched in pain and nearly dropped her phone.
“Grace! Oh my God . . . it isn’t Lester Bellmaker. It’s Andrea Lester, the bell maker. She made the Freedom Bell!”
Just as I started moving the First Lady’s aides pulled the cords that released the drapes over the Freedom Bell; the red, white, and blue fluttered to the floor. In my mind the falling colors became a horrible promise of disaster. On the other side of the room I saw Special Agent Michael O’Brien shrug off the two agents and, his smile broader than ever, pull a small device out of his pocket.
It was a detonator.
Amirah / The Bunker
SHE STOOD ON a metal walkway that circled twenty feet above the main laboratory, watching as her entire staff stood in patient lines, their sleeves rolled up as nurses moved among them to administer injections. Everyone looked so proud. They knew that they were part of something vastly important, that they had contributed something so crucial to the war against the infidel.
Amirah smiled down at them.
One of the nurses flicked a glance up at Amirah and they shared the briefest of smiles. No one noticed that the liquid in the bottle from which she had filled her needles had been the slightest bit different in color. A touch of green, where the others tended more to amber; but the nurse used a nearly opaque white syringe and she moved very quickly, filling her syringe, injecting, wiping the needle point with alcohol-soaked cotton, drawing more, moving on down the line.
Amirah glanced down at her own forearm, and absently rubbed the injection spot. Black lines had begun radiating out from the needle mark. She was perspiring heavily now, her robes far too hot; sweat ran down her back and pooled at her waist. She gripped the metal rail to steady herself as the whole room took a sickening sideways lurch.
“Where are you, Sebastian?” she whispered. On the wall the clock ticked away the seconds.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; Noon
EVERYTHING FROZE DOWN to a single white-hot fragment of a second that moved in bizarrely slow motion. The First Lady was leading the applause for the unveiling of the Freedom Bell. Beside her on the podium Andrea Lester was reaching in her pocket. Grace’s phone was falling from her hand as she pulled back the flap of her coat to reach for her gun. Agent O’Brien was starting to raise the detonator.
My gun was in my hand.
I could hear myself screaming but I had no idea what I was saying.
Every eye in the room was turning toward me. Agents were clawing at their guns.
I had no shot at O’Brien—the First Lady was between me and him. On the podium Andrea Lester was reaching for the President’s wife. Something flashed in her hand and I realized that she had a blade. Not steel—the Secret Service would have caught that—but probably one of the many polymer knives that were nearly as hard as steel and would never trip a metal detector.
With a scream of “Allah akbar!” she lunged at the First Lady.
I shot Andrea Lester twice in the chest. The bullets spun her away from her intended victim but the polymer knife tore a long gash in the First Lady’s sleeve.
Everyone started screaming; panic was immediate and total. I ran forward, grabbing people and hurling them out of my way as I fought to get to the podium where I could get a shot at O’Brien, who had bolted for the podium. The two agents flanking him were already moving, one of them tried to tackle him while the other stepped back and drew his sidearm. Then the crowd surged between us and I lost sight of them.
A shattering volley of gunfire erupted from the far side of the podium, and as I pushed Rudy and the secretary of the interior out of my way I saw that the agent who had drawn his weapon on O’Brien was falling backward, a bullet hole in his temple. The shot hadn’t come from O’Brien—it had come to my left. I turned and saw a gun in Ollie Brown’s hands and as I watched he swung a pistol around and fired two shots and then the throng hid him from view. Had he shot the agent? It seemed like everyone in the room had a gun and bullets burned past me. There was too much commotion to tell who was who, and I didn’t know how many people in this crowd were Brierly’s agents or members of some terrorist hit cell. It was total chaos.
I pivoted and started toward O’Brien but as I located him in the screaming crowd I saw the second agent go down, blood jutting from a slashed throat. O’Brien moved back toward the podium, the detonator still clutched in his big hand.
And suddenly I understood.
It was the bell.
“Seal the room!” I bellowed as I raised my gun once more, then I saw out of the corner of my eye that the First Lady was still on the podium. Andrea Lester was down, and one of the First Lady’s bodyguards was down; other agents were rushing the podium, guns drawn, racing to protect the President’s wife. Gunfire was coming from every point in the room and I saw agents in blue blazers shooting at civilians; I saw a man dressed in carnival pattern shorts standing guard over a pair of congressmen while nearby a Secret Service agent was trying to wrestle a plastic handgun from the hand of what looked like a news reporter. I needed to get to the top of the podium so I could see the room and try to see O’Brien so I could stop him before he pushed that button.
Grace split off to my left and vanished into the press. I saw a swarm of agents pull the First Lady down and hustle her toward the STAFF ONLY door; but in the confusion the wife of the Vice President was still there, nearly lost in the press of congressmen fighting to get away from the gunshots, her agents down and bleeding. Several people were firing now and I couldn’t tell if it was a pitched gun battle or panic shooting; then I saw an agent mount the steps to protect the VP’s wife, but a split second later he staggered and went down, his white shirtfront blooming with red. A second agent leaped up but he also took two in the chest and pirouetted into the crowd. I saw a hand holding a gun pulling back into the crowd. It was bare—no coat sleeve, just a flash of a Hawaiian shirt. One of the tourists? A reporter? Shit . . . how many of these bastards were in the crowd?
“Top!” I yelled when I saw him fight his way out of a knot of panicking people. “It’s O’Brien!”
He nodded and plunged into the crowd again, but there was so much resistance he made no headway. Some of the guests were trying to drop down to the floor to avoid the gunfire, but the storming crowds trampled them. I saw Rudy pushing a group of Girl Scouts into a corner to keep them from getting crushed by the rush of people. There were screams of pain interspersed with the din of the terrified crowd and the constant barrage of gunshots. I heard the distinctive commanding yells of Secret Service agents but no one was heeding their orders to drop and remain down. I had no idea where Grace or the rest of Echo Team was and I continued to fight my way toward the podium. The VP’s wife was huddled down, arms wrapped around her head, flanked on both sides by dead agents. There were hundreds of people yelling and screaming and fighting to try and get out of the Liberty Bell Center.
I caught another flash glimpse of O’Brien. He was still smiling as he raised his hand to bring the detonator up above the level of the crowd.
I had no time to think. I launched myself into the air and my shoulder caught the Vice President’s wife in the side; I wrapped my arms around her and my momentum carried us off the podium just as Michael O’Brien depressed the button.
The Freedom Bell exploded.
Gault / The Bunker
THEY CROUCHED TOGETHER in the gloom of a narrow corridor that ran inside the walls of the Bunker. LEDs set into the floor cast just enough light so they could pick their way through the darkness.
“Let’s split up,” Gault suggested. “Go to the rear hatch and make sure Captain Zeller’s team can get in. Kill anyone who gets in your way.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to the lab.”
“To do what?” Toys asked, his tone brimming with unspoken accusation. “Remember that we came here to kill her. Not to snog and make up.”
Anger flared in Gault’s chest. “Don’t tell me my business,” he snapped. “I’m tired of—”
“Tired of what, Sebastian?” Toys cut him off. “Don’t try to assert your authority over me at this late date. The time for that passed when you let your girlfriend develop a doomsday weapon.”
Gault’s pistol was in his hand, the barrel almost but not quite pointed in Toys’s direction. His assistant looked down at it, then with a smile he reached down and pushed the barrel toward him so that it pointed right at Toys’s heart. Toys leaned close, forcing contact with the gun.
“Either kill her or kill me,” Toys said calmly.
They stared at each other over the gulf that was opening between them.
“Toys . . . I . . .”
Toys pushed the gun aside. He bent forward quickly and kissed Gault on the cheek. “I love you, Sebastian. You and I are family. Remember that.”
With that he turned and vanished down the corridor, leaving Gault alone in the dark.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:01 P.M.
THE OUTER COVERING of the Freedom Bell must have been a thin veneer of painted foil that covered hundreds of small ports. Deep inside the bell, in the actual metal of its body, the signal from the detonator ignited countless pockets of highly compressed gas. The whole surface of the bell disintegrated as thousands upon thousands of tiny glass darts were propelled outward with a whoosh of compressed air. No gunpowder, no nitrates: the bell itself was a giant air gun. Each dart was pointed at one end and had walls as thin as spun sugar. Half of them burst as they struck the foil layer on the outside of the bell and they discharged their contents harmlessly into the air. But the other half—maybe fifteen hundred darts in all—tore into the flesh of members of Congress and the press, stinging the hands and faces of tourists and local dignitaries and ambassadors from a dozen nations. I could feel the wave of them pass over me as I toppled to the ground with the Vice President’s wife under me. I had no idea if I’d been hit or not. Everyone was screaming. The VP’s wife shrieked in agony as we crashed onto the concrete floor.
I rolled off her and spun over into a kneeling shooter’s position. How the hell I’d held on to my gun is beyond me, but it was in my hand and I brought it up, fanning it around to find O’Brien, but he was nowhere in sight. All I could see were legs and torsos as people scattered and stumbled and fell. People kicked me as they ran and I had to scramble back from being trampled to death.
I could hear Grace’s voice, high and shrill, ordering the agents in the room to seal the doors. She knew, she understood what we were facing: all of those glass beads fired from the bell were filled with the plague. From her voice I could tell she was every bit as terrified as me.
The Seif al Din had been launched. After all we’d been through, we could lose it all right now if even one of the infected got out.
God . . .
“Echo Team!” I roared, and suddenly Bunny was there, his face white as paste and splashed with blood.
“Are you hit?” he yelled.
“To hell with that—we have to seal the doors!”
“It’s already done!” I heard a voice yell with enormous force and then realized it was Brierly shouting through the amplification of my earjack. “The doors are sealed. I have teams converging to reinforce us from outside.”
The crowd hit the glass walls like a wave and some of the people closest to the doors had to be crushed by the sheer violent mass. There were screams of rage and terror, and pain.
“I have the VP’s wife,” I said. “But I can’t see the First Lady, Brierly, did she get out?”
“My assistant, Colby, and a team of agents got her to the safe room,” he said. “What the hell is going on, Ledger?”
“I’m on the back side of the podium. Find me,” I said. “Now!”
As I turned to start looking for him, Bunny said, “Boss, those darts . . .”
“I know. Keep an eye out. If anyone starts acting twitchy you take the shot.”
I could see how the weight of what we might have to do hurt the big young man, but he nodded. I looked around and saw Rudy still with the Girl Scouts. One of them was bleeding but from that distance I couldn’t tell if it was from the darts or the panic of the crush.
“Bunny, stay with the VP’s wife,” I ordered. “And keep your eyes open for Agent O’Brien. He’s our hostile. If you see him, kill him.” I gripped his sleeve. “Bunny . . . did you see who Ollie was shooting at?”
“Negative. Everybody’s shooting,” he said, and as if to punctuate his comment a couple of rounds whined over his head and he flinched. The wild gunfire erupted again and the screams rose to a higher pitch.
“Just in case, don’t stand in front of him if he has a gun.”
Bunny turned to me and his eyes searched my face. “Copy that, boss.” He dropped down into a crouch over the Vice President’s wife, who was curled into a fetal ball, her face knotted with pain. Three Secret Service agents converged on him and together they formed a protective ring.
I got to my feet and saw Top and Ollie racing toward one of the doors. They were working together to prevent the crowds from getting out. Grace was already blocking the other door, her pistol out.
I saw Gus Dietrich bent over the governor of Pennsylvania, who was covered with blood. Dietrich was sheltering him with his own body and he had a smoking pistol in his hand. On the floor beside him was a Secret Service agent who had taken the blast of the glass darts full in the face. I met Dietrich’s eyes for a second and we exchanged the briefest of nods. I was conscious of the fact that several of the TV cameramen were still on their feet, their cameras mounted on their shoulders. How the hell they had kept their heads was beyond me, and I could only imagine how half the country was reacting to this. I hoped the networks had blacked it out.
I saw Brierly and grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him against the podium. There were no more gunshots but the air was still torn by screams and yells. We had to bend close and shout in each other’s ear.
“Why the hell did you shoot that woman?” he demanded, and I was conscious of the fact that his pistol was half turned toward me. I batted it aside.
“Andrea Lester was a traitor and a terrorist sympathizer. She rigged her own bell to fire those darts.” I pulled him closer. “She’s working with El Mujahid, and your agent, O’Brien, is one of them. He set off the device.”
That hit him hard. “My . . . God! We screened her, she was cleared to be here.”
“These guys must have had inside help. Trust no one right now.”
“Inside—?”
“No time for that. Listen to me and listen close. The darts from the Bell . . . they contain the infectious agent Grace told you about. You know Ebola? This is a hundred times worse.” I pulled his ear to within an inch of my mouth. “If one single person gets out of this room we’ll have a worldwide plague on our hands. There is no cure.” I said that slowly, punctuating each word. “Believe it.”
Brierly’s face twisted into a mask of such utter horror that I thought he was going to scream. Then he ducked as bullets struck the plastic walls around the Liberty Bell. I turned and saw someone dressed like a Philly cop pointing his pistol at us. He fired again and I pushed Brierly out of the way and returned fire. The fake cop pitched back.
I said, “Contact your men outside. Nobody leaves this building. Nobody! We’re going to need troops and a class-A biohazard team.”
He licked his lips, blinking several times as the devastating news sank in, and then I saw the man behind the bureaucrat take over. “Christ, I hope you’re wrong about this, Ledger.”
“I wish I was,” I said. “But I’m not.”
Brierly tapped his mike and began rapping out a series of curt commands. He ordered that all teams seal and defend every exit in the building, and he reinforced that to include exits that led off from the offices and rooms beyond the STAFF ONLY. “Hummingbird is to be located and secured.” Hummingbird was the code name for the First Lady. Junebug was the VP’s wife. When he got confirmations he turned to me.
“Okay, the First Lady is in the safe room. The VP’s wife is being guarded by one of your men and three of my agents. We’ll move her to the safe room in a bit.” He looked marginally relieved.
“Brierly, you need to make sure everyone understands that we can’t let anyone out of here. Not even the President’s wife.”
He stared at me, torn by his responsibility to protect his charges and the greater reality of the plague. Finally he nodded and keyed his mike. “This is Director Linden Brierly. This is an all-stations alert. On presidential orders no one is to leave this building. No exceptions. Repeat and confirm.” All posts confirmed, but I could imagine a lot of them were either scratching their heads or getting really spooked. “You’d better be right about this.”
I left him to his job and went to try and find O’Brien but I couldn’t see him anywhere. The gunfire was dwindling now, just sporadic shots interspersed with yells and screams.
Movement to my right made me turn and Grace was there, with Top right behind her, both with guns drawn. Grace had blood on her clothes but when she saw my expression she glanced down at her clothes then met my eyes. She shook her head. “There was a young woman standing right in front of me,” she said, and left it there.
The gunfire stopped but the crowd was still surging back and forth like frightened animals in a pen.
“Grace . . . we have to calm these people down!”
“I’m on it,” she said and spun off, calling to Top and Dietrich and soon they were moving like bulls through the crowd, shoving people back, yelling orders to everyone, grabbing Secret Service agents and putting them to work. Skip Tyler was near the back wall, reloading his gun.
“Skip,” I said as I rushed over, “help me find O’Brien.”
“The red-haired guy? He went through there a second ago.” He pointed to the STAFF ONLY door that was tucked into a corner. We raced over but the door was locked from the other side.
“You sure he went this way?”
“Yeah, him and Ollie followed a whole bunch of Secret Service agents who were hustling the First Lady into the safe room.” He looked confused. “That was the protocol, right?”
“Son of a bitch,” I snarled and kicked the door in. “Skip, guard this door. Get Grace or Top to give me some backup, but nobody else gets in. You hear me? Nobody. I’m counting on you to hold this line.”
The young sailor gave me a serious nod and took up a defensive stance. “You got it, Captain.”
I ran through the doorway.
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT OPENED A slit in a wall panel and peered through it and almost gasped. Amirah was not five feet from him. Below her the nurses had nearly completed the injections.
He steeled himself and aimed his pistol through the gap and put the red dot of his laser, light as a whisper, on Amirah’s back, right between her shoulders. One shot from this distance would punch through her spine, tear through her heart, and burst from between her breasts to leave a gaping red hole the size of a golf ball. One flex of his finger and the traitorous bitch would be dead. He could do it. He knew he could.
Damn you, Amirah, he said, and without meaning to he mentally added, my love.
Tears jeweled his vision, warping her with prismatic distortion. The barrel of the pistol wavered. His assault team would be entering the cave any moment and Toys would lead them here. Gault shivered, partly at the thought of the firestorm Captain Zeller would be unleashing here in the Bunker, and partly at the thought of Toys’s transformation. Had his assistant actually changed that much or had Gault been blind all these years to the scorpion he kept by his side?
The seconds ticked away. Soon the whole Bunker would be a hell of bullets and blood. Soon everyone would be dead. Amirah, too, whether he killed her himself or not. His orders to Zeller had been specific. Kill everyone, no exceptions.
Amirah.
Tears broke and rolled down his cheeks and before he could stop it a single, heartbroken sob escaped his throat. He saw Amirah stiffen, but she did not turn, and Gault forced his hands to steady, to hold the red pinprick of the laser sight on her back. Be a fucking man, he snarled inwardly.
Amirah.
And then she spoke.
“Sebastian,” she said.
Amirah turned without haste to face him. Her head was bowed, looking down to see the red laser dot on her chest, wavering right over her heart. She raised her head slowly.
Gault felt a cold hand reach into his own chest and squeeze his heart to a tiny block of ice. Amirah’s eyes were wide and glassy, bright with fever. She reached a hand up to the front of her chadri, gathered the black cloth in her fingers, and slowly pulled the scarf down to reveal her smiling mouth. Her lovely olive skin had paled to a sickly sand color, almost gray, and her full lips were stained with fresh blood.
“Sebastian,” she said softly as her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl of vicious animal hunger.
“My God.” Gault recoiled in horror. “What have you done?”
Amirah advanced toward the wall and even through the narrow opening of the observation slit he could smell her. A fetid, rotting-meat stink that rolled off her like the perfume of hell.
“Seif al Din,” she whispered, leaning to peer in through the slit.
“You’re infected!” His gun hand was shaking so bad that he almost dropped the weapon. Sweat burst from his pores and his pulse snapped like firecrackers. “What have you done?” he asked again in a terrified whisper.
She shook her head, still smiling. “No, Sebastian, I’m not infected. I’m reborn. I’m more alive now than I ever imagined.”
“This will kill you!”
She shook her head again. “The pathogen is no longer fatal . . . I’ve perfected it. You only saw Generation Seven.” She giggled. “That one scared you, Sebastian. You almost screamed like a woman.” Amirah wiped drool from her lips. “By now my lovely El Mujahid should have launched Generation Ten on the American people. They will be dying soon, Sebastian. All of them. Seif al Din is so quick.” She snapped her fingers in front of the slot and Gault jumped.
“Generation Ten? You’re insane!”
“I’m immortal,” she countered. “You see . . . we had a breakthrough, Sebastian. We’ve been working so hard for so long, and you thought we were plodding along with Generation Three. But, oh . . . Generation Ten is immediate. The body reanimates immediately. No lag time, no time to quarantine the infected. Generation Ten is the perfect plague.”
“Perfect?” The word was like bile in his mouth.
She ignored him, totally rapt by her discoveries. “But we went further still. Generation Eleven was a disappointment, but, oh . . . Generation Twelve!” She drew the word out, filling it with wonder and with threat. “We broke through into an entirely new area of science. It’s what I’ve been laboring on for the last year while you left me here in this bunker. The killer pathogen was developed to Generation Ten before you even knew of the second generation.” She laughed at the look of shocked hurt on his face. “We had the plague but we couldn’t use it until we had the cure. And now . . . Oh, Sebastian, it’s a fire in my blood! I can feel it moving through me.”
“You . . . used it on yourself! You’ve turned yourself into one of those damned monsters . . .”
“Do I look like a monster?” she said. She stepped back from the slot and cupped her breasts through her robes. “Do you think I’m a monster, Sebastian?”
“God . . .”
Amirah’s face instantly changed and she whipped her hands away from her breasts and slapped them against the wall on either side of the slot. It was like an entirely different personality had shoved itself into place behind her dark eyes. “God? How dare you even mention Him! Your god is money, you worthless piece of shit.”
Gault recoiled and raised the pistol.
“You don’t even understand what it means to worship God. You couldn’t know, Sebastian, what it feels like to feel Him in every thought, every breath, to hear His words flowing over the desert sands. You pretended to read the writings of the Prophet to fool El Mujahid, but you lacked even the depth of understanding to let those words enter your soul! You think you made me into your whore? Do you think that I would truly betray my husband, my people, my faith, for you?” She spat at him and he dodged away, terrified of what might be in that sputum. He swung the pistol up and put the dot of the laser sight on her forehead where it glowed like an Indian bindhi.
“I loved you,” he said weakly. And then his mind replayed those words and he realized that he had said “loved,” not “love.” It nearly broke him. In his mind’s eye he saw himself turning away from her and bringing the barrel of his pistol up to his own temple. Better to snuff out that loss than endure its absence.
But although his hands trembled the gun did not move.
Amirah ignored it. “Have you figured it out yet? You must have or why else would you be here, Sebastian?” She was using his name like a whip and each time it stung him. “You think you found us, but we had been looking for you for years. Not specifically you—you’re just not that important—no, we were looking for any faithless greedy dog who had the resources you have. It was so easy!” She laughed and shook her head, delighting in the pain she caused him. “It was so easy to lure you with covert hints through your network of spies, to draw you to us step by step, to stage things so that you always felt that you were in control when all the time this was a plan my husband and I had made. Yes . . . my husband. El Mujahid, the greatest of God’s warriors on Earth. A true soldier of the Faith, a man who lives the words of the Prophet every minute of every day.”
“But . . . you . . . we . . .”
She spat again, but this time on the floor. “What? We made love? Is that what you were going to say?” Her voice made the words intensely ugly. “I’m not a man, Sebastian. I can’t go into battle with guns and knives like my husband and his soldiers. I’m a woman and I am forced to use other weapons . . . no matter how utterly disgusting and humiliating it has been to open my body to you.”
“No,” Gault snapped back, anger flaring. “I know you loved me. I know.”
He saw the mad look in her eyes flicker and for a second that other personality, the dreamy one, seemed to drift back. And Gault knew—knew for sure—that he saw the fires of love still there. Or maybe it was only the embers, for in the next moment the hard and murderous personality reemerged.
“Each day I get down on my knees to beg forgiveness from Allah for what I have done, even though it is His will and serves His ends. You made me a whore in the eyes of God, Sebastian. How many deaths does that earn you?”
Behind Amirah there was a strange sound. The gathered scientists and technicians were all jabbering loudly, some in shocked protest, others in fury. Amirah stepped back to allow Gault to see what was happening.
“They think we have an antidote,” she said softly as below more than two thirds of the crowd were sinking down to their knees or collapsing onto tables. “They think we are all safe from Seif al Din.”
“What have you done?”
She turned to him. “I gave my best people—a few fighters, a few scientists—Generation Twelve. Like me.” She raised her arm and pulled back her sleeve to show the needle mark on her arm. From the dark pinprick black lines of infection radiated out like a dark spider-web.
“You’ve killed your own people.”
“Oh no . . . not all. The rest of them were given Generation Ten, and soon I’ll open the Bunker doors and they’ll spread out across Arabia like the plague they are. The Great Satan does not have enough bullets to stop the waves of them that will come.”
“You’re insane! You’ve doomed us all.”
But Amirah shook her head. “No . . . Generation Twelve is different. We don’t die like they do. We . . . ascend. I’ve already ascended. I died without dying, Sebastian, but I suffered no brain death, no loss of brain or motor function, no loss of intellect. I am me, Amirah, scientist, wife of El Mujahid, loyal handmaiden to Allah, a servant of the word of the Prophet . . . but now I cannot ever die. I’ve been reborn, you see. Seif al Din has cut through me like a purifying scythe. My sins, my earthly attachments have been carved away by the Sword of the Faithful. What remains is pure. What remains is the instrument of God on Earth.”
“Oh . . . Amirah . . . my princess,” Gault murmured, tears cascading down his cheeks. “What have you done? What have you done . . . ?”
“Beginning today thousands of doses of Generation Twelve will be sent from here to those fighters who have proven their faith. Once they have ascended they will share the gift with their families and their most trusted friends, and then we will sit back and watch the rest of the godless world devour itself!”
“I won’t let you!”
Amirah reached out to grasp the lip of the observation slit. She pulled herself close and whispered like a child conveying a great secret. “I know everything about the Bunker, Sebastian. Everything. I know all your secrets.”
Gault stared at her, puzzled, and then he heard the slow scuff of shambling feet in the darkness of the corridor behind him.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:04 P.M.
AS SOON AS I was inside the sound of chaos diminished and I crept into a long, darkened corridor that led, I knew, into a maze of offices and workrooms. The center wasn’t that big but there were still a hundred places someone could hide. I moved forward through several rooms, encountering one locked door after another. It would be suicide to kick each door, but these were interior locks and I could trip most of them with a stiff piece of plastic. I used my Barnes & Noble member card. It was slow going, searching and clearing every room without backup. I wondered what was taking Skip so damn long to send someone after me.
I was hoping that O’Brien and Ollie had tried to make a run at the First Lady and had been cut down by Colby and his team. Agents on the Presidential Detail are incredibly tough and resourceful. But with every step my hopes diminished. I didn’t know who or what O’Brien was, but if Brierly was right and Ollie was a top CIA killer, then this was exactly his sort of operation: a hunt-and-kill.
What confused me was the fact that Brierly did not seem to be our man. Having spoken with him and seen him in action I could not believe that he was any part of the chaos back in the hall; and yet Ollie had been with O’Brien. And someone had fired those shots that saved O’Brien. Very accurate shooting in a hysterical situation, which showed professional calm.
I stopped when I saw a splash of blood on the floor. Very fresh. Creeping forward I found more, and then a place where feet had scuffed in the blood. Two sets of shoes. A scuffle? Had someone else come in following O’Brien and Ollie and been ambushed by them, or had the two traitors had a falling-out?
Then it occurred to me that one of them might have become infected. What if the walker plague had turned one of them into a monster? Was I chasing two armed men or one man and a zombie? Or two zombies? The thought chilled me.
Grace’s voice in my earjack made me jump and I faded to one side and crouched down behind the open door of a mop closet, pistol aimed into the darkness.
“Joe . . . where are you?”
“I’m inside the center,” I whispered. “O’Brien came in here with Ollie Brown. I’m following a blood trail but no sign of them yet. I could use some backup.”
“Top Sims is on his way in with Skip. I have two other agents on the door.”
“Good. What’s the situation outside?”
“It’s bad. We’re getting the crowd quieted down, but I think some of them are already infected. Several people are showing signs of sickness. I have our people going through the crowd and separating out anyone who was hit by those darts.”
“Grace . . . if they start to turn . . .”
“I know, Joe,” she said in a voice that was hard but scared. We were both thinking about St. Michael’s, but this was much worse. Members of Congress were here, and the VP’s wife; and on both sides of the glass were TV cameras. “I called Church and he had the President order an immediate media blackout. Church said that the President has declared a state of emergency for the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Oh God!”
Through the mike I could hear a fresh wave of screams.
And then gunfire.
Then nothing as Grace’s link went dead.
“Grace . . .” I said into the silent link. I wanted to run back. I needed to go forward. I was totally torn.
I heard a muffled sound behind me and whirled, but it was one of the Secret Service agents standing in the shadow of an open doorway. I recognized him. Agent Colby, Brierly’s second in command. I could see a couple of other agents behind him.
“God, am I glad to see you. Is that the safe room? Is the First Lady okay?”
Colby took a step into the hallway and smiled.
But it wasn’t a smile.
His lips peeled back from his teeth and bloody drool dripped from his mouth. With a feral growl like a hunting cat Colby and the other agents rushed me.
The Bunker
ABDUL STEPPED INTO the hall, his automatic rifle ready. He was happy to be away from the hall where all sense and reason seemed to have fled. Though he understood the plan El Mujahid and Amirah had devised he still thought it was insane. It did not fit with his understanding of the Koran; but there was nothing he could do about it. He knew enough about the Seif al Din to realize that Amirah was distributing two different versions of it, one to the general staff and another to the more valuable team members. Anah, Amirah’s assistant, had tried to give him a shot but he’d fended her off, not wanting any part of this.
He was almost happy when the alarms rang, warning of an intrusion at the rear hatch.
The monitors were offline but Abdul had a good idea what was happening. Gault was not fool enough to have come here alone. So Abdul sent a team of soldiers to the hatch to intercept whatever backup the infidel had brought with him. Now he was hurrying that way himself to take charge of the situation.
He switched off the safety and took a more comfortable grip on his weapon as he stepped through a portal from the side corridor to the one that led to the hatch.
Toys stepped out from behind a stack of crates and put the barrel of his pistol against the back of Abdul’s head.
“Shhhhh,” Toys said with a smile.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:05 P.M.
COLBY CAME AT me with incredible speed, reaching with hooked fingers, teeth snapping at me while he was still two yards away. Even with everything that had happened—everything that was still happening—it took me totally off guard. I brought my gun up but not in time as he leaped in and drove me back against the wall. The other agents were three steps behind him.
My back slammed into the wall and for a fragment of a second the thought I’m dead flashed through my mind; but even as I was thinking that my body was moving. Years of conditioning make the limbs move at the reflexive level, and it was all of those years of drills, of repetitive movements, that saved me. But it was so close.
As I hit the wall my hips turned to the left and I slammed the butt of my pistol into Colby’s temple. It made his mass turn with mine and we rolled down the wall together, turn after vertical turn, putting distance between us and the other walkers. When we hit the doorway we jolted to a stop and I rammed the barrel of the .45 into Colby’s mouth, and even as he bit down on it I pulled the trigger. The big hollow-point blew out the back of his head and punched a hole the size of a nickel through the forehead of the agent right behind him. Both of them were instantly dead, but the sudden drop of Colby’s body coupled with the locked teeth around the pistol jerked the weapon out of my hand.
I pushed myself away and dodged instantly to my left as a third walker lunged over the corpses of his fellows. His arms closed around empty space.
There were three more of them—four in all. The one who had jumped at me had fallen forward. He made a grab for my ankle but I rushed forward to meet the attack of the next closest walker.
Even as I closed the short six-foot distance I whipped the folding RRF knife from its pocket holster and with a flick snapped the blade into place. The motion took a fraction of a second and as the lead walker hit me I spun away like a ballet dancer but at the end of the pirouette I ducked low and slashed him across the back of the knee. The RRF was wickedly sharp and the creature’s tendons parted like old string. As he staggered and went down I shoved him toward the second walker and lunged past their colliding bodies and slammed into the third, using a hard palm at the end of a stiffened arm to drive him back; then I ducked under his outstretched arms, avoiding his snapping teeth, and came up behind him. I grabbed his hair with my left hand and slammed the point of the knife up into the sweet spot—the arched opening at the base of the skull. The blade pierced the spinal cord and the walker shuddered to a stop and instantly fell forward.
The walker who’d tried to grab me after I’d killed Colby was scuttling forward now, running at me low and fast. I used my knife arm to parry his reaching arms and sidestepped like a bullfighter, then brought the RRF up and over and down and buried the entire blade in the wind-gate, the soft spot at the top of the skull. I gave the blade a brutal half turn and yanked it up, sidestepping to avoid the arching spray of blood and brain tissue.
That left two.
The one I’d crippled was crawling along the floor toward me but the other was up and running at me. When he was two paces out I stepped in and to the side so that his mass missed me by half an inch. Again I changed my step into a pivot and came up behind him and tried for the sweet spot again, but the hair was greasy with gel and he slipped away with my blade stuck into the solid bone of his skull. His twist wrenched the handle out of my hand and it wasn’t worth fighting for, so I let it go and wrapped my arm around his throat and gave him a reverse hip throw. When you’re facing forward it’s a hard fall but not fatal; when the thrower is back to back with the person he’s trying to throw then all of the hundreds of pounds of force are trapped in the weakest body point. His neck snapped like a bundle of wet sticks.
The last walker was crawling forward, but I jumped over his arms and came down on the small of his back. The vertebrae cracked audibly. He flopped down, dead from the waist down. I couldn’t leave him like that so I recovered the RRF. This time there was no way for the walker to twist away as my blade found its target and shut him off.
Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:05 P.M.
ONE MOMENT GRACE was speaking to Joe via commlink and then next the air around her was whining with bullets. A reporter was blasted backward as a bullet punched through his chest and he knocked Grace back and down. As she fell she saw three men separate themselves from the crowd. Each of them had guns and she recognized the weapons as the high-density plastic handguns that terrorists used to sneak through airport metal detectors. Probably firing ceramic rounds. No metal at all, she thought as she pushed the dead reporter off her and drew her weapon.
The foremost of the three gunmen saw her and raised his weapon but Grace gave him a double tap—chest and head—and flung him back against the wall. She swung her gun to the second killer just as two figures came suddenly in from the killers’ blind side. Gus Dietrich took the left-hand gunman out with three quick shots: two to the middle of his back and one to the back of his head. Next to him, Bunny appeared, no weapon in his hand, but he didn’t need one for the other killer: he chopped down on the man’s wrist with a balled fist, knocking the gun to the floor, then grabbed him by throat and crotch and slammed him into a corner of the Liberty Bell display case. He stepped back to let the broken body drop.
Then a fourth man stepped out of the crowd of tourists and pointed a polymer pistol at the back of Bunny’s head. Grace didn’t bother to call a warning; she put two rounds in the man and he spun away trailing blood. Bunny threw her a grim nod and scooped up the man’s plastic pistol.
Then the rest of the Secret Service agents were there.
“There are still hostiles in the crowd,” Grace yelled. “Search everyone.”
The agents moved very fast, and they plowed into the crowd, gruffly shoving congressmen and tourists alike. They found one final hostile, a trembling young man dressed like a Japanese tourist. He managed to get his pistol into his mouth before the agents could tackle him. The blast took off the top of his head.
Rudy pushed his way through the crowd toward Grace.
“Are you all right—?” she began, but he interrupted.
“Grace . . . some of these people are getting sick. It’s happening already . . . faster than before. We have to do something. We have to separate them before this becomes another St. Michael’s.”
As he spoke one of the reporters staggered forward and dropped to his knees and vomited. He looked up at them with a fevered face and eyes that were already becoming glassy. The man reached out a desperate claw of a hand toward them. “Help . . . me . . .”
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:07 P.M.
I WIPED MY knife and slid it back into its pocket clip then retrieved my gun and cleaned it quickly on Colby’s tie. I had no idea how many agents had gone with the First Lady. Was there a chance she was safe somewhere? Would we get that much of a break?
I tapped my ear mike but there was nothing, not even static. It must have been damaged when I’d hit the wall. I was alone.
I was also furious with myself for not having brought a stronger force here to Philly; or maybe for not pressuring Church into canceling the event. We’d both looked at this as a likely scenario and we’d still allowed it go forward. I realized as I thought these things that this was one of the aftershocks of 9/11. For a while after that everything that could draw a crowd was canceled, but then our culture moved on and there were no more attacks. We became complacent. Maybe we even thought that, against all evidence, we really had Al Qaeda on the run and that we’d taken the fight so effectively to them that we could settle back into normal life here in the States.
Today we were paying the price for complacence. Did the blame belong to me? Church? Or was this a cultural failing? If I lived through the day I’d have to take a closer look at those questions; but social philosophy doesn’t help you in the heat of a firefight, so I pressed on.
There was still no sign of backup coming for me, but I couldn’t wait. I crept forward, going room by darkened room. I tried light switches in the hallway and in several rooms but got nothing. Someone must have thrown the circuit breakers. The only light was the dim red glow of emergency lamps. I had to check every locked room, every closet to see if I could locate the First Lady, or Agent O’Brien, and throughout I could feel a hot spot between my eyes as if Ollie Brown was laying his laser sight on me and waiting for the right moment to punch my ticket.
Five rooms in I heard wet sounds coming from the far side of a row of desks. I knew what those sounds would be and I really didn’t want to look; but I had no choice. Taking a fresh grip on my .45 I rounded the desks on the balls of my feet.
There were three of them on their knees, heads bent forward, like lions around a zebra carcass. Only the carcass was that of a Secret Service agent and the lions were office workers—two women and a man wearing business casual and sporting Liberty Bell Center IDs around their necks. Their hands and mouths were black with blood.
Bile rose in my throat and I gagged. Just a tiny sound, just enough so that their heads snapped up like the wary predators they were. The closest of them, a woman, hissed at me.
I shot her in the head. The impact flung her back and she toppled over the dead agent in a perverse imitation of intimacy.
The other two rose up and lunged but I was ready.
Two shots, two kills.
I stared at the bodies, and then at the dead agent. His throat had been savaged. Would he reanimate, or was this beyond the pathogen’s wound-repair mechanism? I pointed my gun at his head and just as my finger was tightening around the trigger I heard three separate sounds at the same moment.
From far behind me I heard Top Sims calling my name. At my feet I heard the first feeble twitch as some new and monstrous force fired the engines that would raise this fallen hero up as an undead killer. And up ahead I heard the First Lady scream.
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT WHIRLED AND pointed his pistol into the shadows. Five figures crowded the narrow corridor, their bare feet scuffing the floor. In the pale glow of the LED panels their faces were a ghostly white, but their eyes and mouths were as black as sin.
He recognized one of the monsters: Khalid, the soldier who had been the first of El Mujahid’s men to take Gault’s money for personal services. Gault had liked him. The man had always been tough and crafty, but now he merely looked dead. His skin hung slack on his skull and his mouth sagged open to utter a moan of mindless need.
“I’m sorry,” Gault whispered. His first shot took Khalid in the shoulder and spun him around so that his outstretched hands slapped the second zombie across the face. If Gault had watched the scene in a movie it would have been comical, a dark slapstick; but this was no zombie comedy, no BBC pantomime. This was death. This was horror.
The creatures behind Khalid pushed him forward so that he kept moving toward Gault even though he was facing the wrong direction, like flotsam on a current that flowed from the bowels of hell. Gault gagged and fired again. Khalid’s face disintegrated and he collapsed. Two others stumbled over him, falling down to crack bones on the hard concrete. Gault shot them each in the head; but the final two were already climbing over them, their mouths working as the scent of blood filled the air.
He fired and fired and fired. Behind him, through the narrow observation slit in the wall, he heard Amirah’s mad laughter.
Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:11 P.M.
“FOR GOD’S SAKE . . . help me!” The junior senator from the state of Alabama raised his head and stared pleadingly at Grace Courtland. His skin had already turned from a healthy tan to the color of old parchment. There were two puncture marks on his cheek from where a pair of the glass darts had struck him.
Grace raised her pistol and pointed it at him. “Get against the wall, sir,” she said tightly.
“I . . . don’t feel . . .” He shook his head as if trying to clear muddy thoughts. “I’m . . . sick . . .”
“Sir . . . for the love of God, please get against the wall with the others.”
Behind her a woman’s voice slashed the air. “Agent . . . what the hell do you think you’re doing? Lower your weapon immediately.” It was not the first time the Vice President’s wife had yelled at her in the last few minutes. Grace stood her ground.
The room was silent except for sobs from the wounded. Grace, Bunny, Dietrich, and Brierly had worked through the crowd, separating out anyone who had been stung by the darts. Over sixty people, all of them sick and shivering with fever, were huddled together in a cluster by the wall farthest from the STAFF ONLY door. Rudy moved among them making quick and purely visual assessments of them. His face was rigid with shock. A line of Secret Service agents, fifteen of them, stood with their pistols pointed at the sick and wounded, but even the toughest agents among them looked confused and frightened. Outside, on the other side of the thick glass walls, the National Guard were setting up machine gun emplacements, and the sky above Independence Mall was filled with army gunships.
Things had started brewing to a panic and so Grace had climbed to the top of the podium and fired a shot into the ceiling to get them to listen. “Listen to me!” she shouted.
Bunny and Dietrich took up positions around the base of the podium, their guns at the ready. The fifteen remaining Secret Service agents stood in a line between the infected and the rest, their faces showing the terrible doubt and conflict they each felt.
In a few short sentences Grace told everyone that the Freedom Bell had been rigged by terrorists and that anyone who had been struck by the darts was likely to become infected with a highly contagious disease. That helped with the separation as the uninjured moved quickly away from them. The disease, she told them, would cause erratic and violent behavior. As she spoke she looked for signs of infection in anyone who had not admitted to having been stung.
That’s when Audrey Collins, the VP’s wife, had suddenly spoken up to champion the cause of the infected. Collins was a thin woman with a hatchet face and fierce blue eyes, and despite the agony from three cracked ribs, she managed to muster enough personal power to take a commanding position in the conflict. “You will lower your weapon, Agent, or so help me God, I will make sure that you are punished to the fullest extent of the law.”
Grace stepped down from the podium, and Dietrich turned and brought his gun up to cover the infected junior senator. Grace said, “Ma’am, you have to be quiet and let us do our jobs—”
Collins cut her off. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, ma’am, I know who you are and I know full well that your husband can have me jailed, deported, and probably stood against a wall and shot . . . but right now I am trying to save the lives of most of the people in this room and probably all of the people in this country. If you interfere with me or prevent me from doing what I have to do I will knock you on your ass.”
Grace took a step closer and the savage look in her eyes was so ferocious that the people who had gathered behind the VP’s wife faded back, leaving the woman alone with Grace.
“Ma’am, if you do anything—anything—to try and stop me I’ll put you against the wall with them. Believe me, you don’t want me to do that.”
“Ma’am,” said Rudy, stepping up beside Grace. “I implore you to listen.”
“Slow down here, Major,” Brierly said, coming up on Grace’s other side. “Everyone’s scared here.”
The remaining Presidential Detail agents milled uncertainly near Mrs. Collins. Brierly had briefed them and had even channeled the President himself on to the team’s command link. The President’s voice had been trembling with fear and rage but he had been clear: Grace Courtland was in charge. Even so, threats to their principal went against all of their training.
“No one more than me, sir,” Grace said, but her eyes locked on the VP’s wife. “But this is not something I can back down on. You know that.”
Bunny moved to Grace’s right with a good shooter’s angle to the presidential agents.
“Mrs. Collins . . . ?” implored the junior senator.
Audrey Collins, apart from being married to the Vice President, was a career politician in her own right and she was used to giving orders rather than taking them. But for all her bluster she was no fool. She shifted her furious stare from Grace and looked at the young senator; and changed her expression from anger to wretched concern.
“Do what the major says, Tom,” she said to the frightened congressman. “Everything will be okay.”
She turned to Grace and the look they shared insisted that nothing was going to be okay. Not now, and maybe not ever. “If you’re wrong about this,” said Mrs. Collins, “I’ll—”
“I’m not,” Grace interrupted. Then she softened her own expression. “Thank you.”
“Fuck you,” said the Vice President’s wife.
Grace almost smiled, but then someone screamed.
“My God! She’s biting him!”
Everyone turned toward the wall, to where the anchorwoman for the local ABC affiliate was hunched over the unconscious body of a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. The anchorwoman, a petite blonde with sculpted nails and Prada shoes, was chewing on the tourist’s arm.
“No,” Bunny said. “Come on . . . no!”
“God help us all,” Grace said and raised her gun.
What happened next was unspeakable.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:12 P.M.
THERE WAS NO time to think. I put a shot into the head of the agent and spun on my heel before he flopped back against the ground, sprinting in the direction of the scream. That wasn’t the hunting-cat screech of a walker—it was filled with very human terror. I just hoped it wasn’t her last scream.
Screw caution—I ran. I tore through room after room. Twice white-faced figures lunged at me out of the shadows and each time I put them down with single shots without breaking stride. I could still hear voices behind. Top and Skip calling my name. They were smart enough to follow the trail of bodies.
The First Lady screamed again, just ahead, on the other side of a closed door.
I hit the door with a jumping kick that tore it off its hinges. The door crashed onto a walker and crushed him underneath. I leaped into the room, taking in the scene as I landed in a combat crouch.
The First Lady was huddled in the corner of an office cubicle. Her Secret Service detail had been slaughtered. Only one agent remained and there was a crowd of seven walkers trying to bring him down. The agent was bleeding from half a dozen bites and his face was white with pain and panic. Two of the walkers were the last remaining agents; the rest were employees of the Liberty Bell Center. No sign of Ollie or O’Brien.
I opened fire and took one of the walkers in the back of the neck. He crashed forward and dragged down two others as he fell.
“Help!” the First Lady screamed. “Oh God, please help us!”
The nearest walkers had turned toward me at the sound of my shot and they rushed me. I shot one but then there was a blast from behind me and the walker to my right pitched back with a gaping hole in his temple.
“On your six!” I heard Top growl and then he and Skip were rushing the group of walkers from either flank. Top used double taps each time, stalling them with a chest shot and then putting one through the brain. Skip’s shots were more random and he hit walkers over and over again in the body, wasting shots.
“Head shots, goddamn it!” Top yelled at him and blew away a walker that was rushing at Skip from his left.
The remaining Secret Service agent fired his last shot, a wild blast that nearly hit Top, and then the last walker tackled him so that they fell into the cubicle, crashing down at the First Lady’s feet. She screamed but then she snatched a laptop off the desk and used it to beat in the back of the walker’s head. None of us could take a shot because she was so close, and she laid into the monster with a will, her fear becoming fury. The walker shivered and collapsed into a terminal stillness. Beneath him the agent groaned and reached out an imploring hand to her.
“Roger!” she said and reached for him.
“No!” I yelled and darted forward to slap her hand away. “Don’t! He’s infected.”
Around us the room became unnaturally still as the gunshot echoes faded. The only sound was a painful wheeze from Roger, the wounded agent.
“I’m . . . sorry, ma’am,” he said, struggling to get the words out.
The First Lady looked at me. “Help him, for God’s sake!”
I stepped between her and Roger, then squatted down and offered him my left hand. He closed his hand around it with ferocious desperation as if it was a lifeline that could pull him up from hell. “Listen to me,” I said gently. “Your name’s Roger?”
“Agent . . . Roger Jefferson.”
“I’m Joe Ledger. Listen, Roger . . . there’s been an outbreak. A plague. You understand? From the Freedom Bell.”
He nodded. His breathing was getting worse.
“That’s what happened to your men. One or more of them must have been exposed. It . . . changes people.”
He nodded again. “I . . . saw. Barney . . . Linus . . . all of them. God . . .”
“I’m sorry, man.”
“Is . . . is she . . . ?” He turned his head, looking for the First Lady, but I don’t think he could see her anymore.
The First Lady put a hand on my shoulder and leaned over. “Roger. I’m right here.”
“Are . . . are you . . . all . . . ?”
“I’m fine, Roger. You didn’t let them get me.”
Roger smiled and his eyes drifted shut, but his grip was still strong. He whispered something that I had to bend close to hear.
“Cap’n,” warned Top.
Roger said, “I . . . saw how it works.” Blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. “You do . . . what you have to do.”
“I will,” I promised. “Rest easy, Roger. You saved the First Lady.”
With his last strength he gave me a trembling smile. “All . . . part of the job.” He tried to laugh but there was not enough left of him and he settled back.
“Get her out of here,” I said to Top. “Do it now.”
“What do you mean?” she protested as Top closed in. “We can’t just leave him here.”
“Ma’am,” Top said, “you saw what happens. Let the captain do what he has to do. It’s the best thing . . . it’s best for Roger.”
“Top . . . get her out now!”
The First Lady straightened her back and though tears flowed down her face she walked away with great dignity. I hadn’t voted for her husband, but I sure as hell admired her.
When they were out of the room I disengaged my hand from Roger’s slack grip. I reached over and took a cushion off the nearest chair and put it over his face. I was counting seconds. I felt the first twitch in less than forty seconds since his last breath and I put the barrel of my gun against the pad and fired. Maybe it was because the pad would muffle the shot and make it easier for the First Lady, or maybe it was because it would cover his face and grant him a slice of dignity. Or maybe it was that I couldn’t bear to see another good man become one of those things. Probably all three.
I stood up and looked at Skip. The young sailor wouldn’t meet my eyes. He just turned away and I followed him out of the cubicle and into the next room. The First Lady was sitting on a leather office chair and Top had brought her a cup of water from a nearby cooler. She sipped it and when she saw me she just stared at me, her expression un-readable.
The office was big and looked to be the graphic arts department for the center, with worktables, advertising sketches pinned to the walls, and machines for printing posters. Two offices led off from the main room, both with doors that stood ajar. I had just opened my mouth to order Skip to check them out when two figures stepped out of the shadows of the left-hand office. They came in quick and they had guns in their hands.
Ollie Brown and Special Agent Michael O’Brien.
Grace / The Bell Chamber / Saturday, July 4; 12:13 P.M.
“MAJOR . . . WATCH!” BUNNY yelled, and Grace whirled just as the anchorwoman for Channels 6 News leaped at her from the podium. The anchor’s skin was wax-white and her eyes as round and empty as silver dollars, but she growled with hunger as she lunged for Grace’s throat.
“Bloody hell!” Grace shot the woman twice in the face. Blood splattered the faces of the three snarling figures that were mounting the steps behind her.
“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Mrs. Collins, and she made a grab for Grace’s gun arm and succeeded in pulling it down so that the next round chopped a divot out of the marble floor and ricocheted up to punch a red hole through the thigh of the Canadian ambassador. The ambassador dropped with a shriek of pain and instantly two of the walkers leaped from the podium and pounced on him. Grace wrestled with the Vice President’s wife, who had a surprising amount of wiry strength and in the end she had to let go with her left hand and chop Mrs. Collins on the side of the neck. It dropped the woman to her knees and Grace tore her gun arm free just as the third walker dove at her. Grace put two rounds in him and the corpse skidded to a stop inches from Mrs. Collins.
IT WAS COMPLETE pandemonium in the Bell Chamber as the infected who had lapsed into comas instantly snapped awake as walkers and attacked the crowd. Even with the warnings Grace, Brierly, and Rudy had given them about the nature of the infection the fifteen remaining Secret Service agents faltered, hesitating, unable to open fire on citizens, congressmen, and dignitaries.
Bunny muscled one dazed agent out of the way just as a journalist from the Daily News was about to grab him. The hulking sergeant snaked out a hand and caught the walker by the throat, buried his borrowed polymer pistol against the creature’s head and fired. He flung the corpse into the path of a second walker and killed that one, but then six of them came at him in a bunch and he fell back, dragging the startled agent with him.
“Fire, goddamn it!” Bunny yelled, and the agent seemed to snap out of his stupor. They found a clear patch of floor and the pair of them made their stand, opening up with both guns. Bunny had four shots left and used them all; the agent wasted an entire clip to bring down just one walker.
That left two from the pack still on their feet. Bunny stepped in and kicked the lead one in the stomach and when it doubled over he arched up and then brought his balled fist down as hard as he could on the back of the exposed skull. The walker immediately went into a boneless sprawl; but his companion just kept coming. He was three steps out when a shot snapped his head back. Bunny turned to see the agent, reloaded now, holding his smoking pistol in a two-hand grip.
BEHIND THEM RUDY, holding a flagpole, stood his ground between a huddled group of Girl Scouts and a walker in a Hawaiian shirt with toucans on it. The walker took a step forward but then ducked back away from the swing of the pole. Rudy frowned. He’d seen all of the tapes of the DMS encounters with the walkers, and he’d noted that they never flinched, never dodged. They lacked the cognitive powers to do it, and even their unnatural reflexes did not include any defensive reactions. And yet this one dodged once, twice.
And he smiled.
He pointed a crooked finger at the little girls behind Rudy and then he did something else walkers can’t do. He spoke.
“Mine!”
“Dios mio!” breathed Rudy, and the idea of a walker still capable of thought and deliberate action nearly took the heart out of him. But the whimpers of the girls behind him put strength in his hands. He held his ground.
AHMED, BROTHER OF Amirah, lover of Andrea Lester and El Mujahid’s chief agent in the United States, leered at Rudy and the girls. He felt amazing, immensely powerful and more completely alive than ever. The Generation Twelve pathogen burned like wildfire in his veins and when he had come awake moments ago he was overwhelmed by the clarity of focus it bestowed. Even after a life lived in dedication to the teachings of the Prophet he had never before understood so completely. The will of Allah was a white-hot light in his brain.
Consumed by his purpose and bursting with immortal power, he rushed forward to do the will of God. As the flagpole swung at him he caught it with one palm and with the other he grabbed Rudy Sanchez by the throat.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:14 P.M.
I RAISED MY pistol and put the laser sight on Ollie Brown who had a Glock in his hand though the barrel was pointed down at the floor.
“You fucking bastard,” I said, and slipped my finger inside the trigger guard, but before I could fire a gunshot shattered the air. Ollie gave me a crooked smile and when he opened his mouth blood gushed over his chin. Ollie dropped his pistol and staggered forward and I realized that O’Brien had shot him. The CIA assassin stumbled, dropped to hands and knees, fighting to keep his head raised. He looked up at me, his eyes glazing.
“S . . . sorry . . .” he said, though his voice was a gurgle. “I . . . I . . .”
And then he collapsed onto the floor.
O’Brien began to raise his gun toward me.
“Drop the weapon!” I snarled. “Do it now!”
“Or what?” he asked, and suddenly his voice was different, no longer the bland American accent he had used before. Now he sounded British. “What will you do? Shoot me?” He laughed. “What do I care?”
“Say the word,” Top murmured from behind me, “and we’ll waste this shitbag.”
“Drop it,” I warned. “Last chance.”
O’Brien closed his eyes for a moment. He was bathed in sweat and his color was bad. He lowered his pistol and then took a sagging sideways step; but his hand snaked out fast as a cobra and caught the doorframe to keep him from falling.
I took a cautious forward step, my pistol rock-steady, the laser sight tattooed on the front of his muscular chest. The agent shook his head as if trying to clear his thoughts, the pistol hung from his hand but he had not dropped it. On the floor I could see Ollie’s fingers open and close slowly. There was a bullet hole in the back of his sports coat from which blood still bubbled sluggishly. I couldn’t have cared less, though. If he was dying, then let him die. Saying that he was sorry didn’t hold much weight for me.
“Drop the gun,” I commanded.
Behind me I could hear Top and Skip moving closer. O’Brien was outnumbered and outgunned.
And still the son of a bitch made a try for it. He raised his head and smiled at me, and I could see that there was something odd about his face. The heavy sweat that soaked his face seemed to be washing the color out of him. His freckles looked like they were melting, and I could see a faint jagged line beneath his skin as if he had a thick scar running diagonally across his face. Was he wearing . . . makeup?
O’Brien looked at me, his eyes going in and out of focus. Then I saw the muscles around his eyes tighten as he suddenly whipped his gun up and screamed: “Allah akbar!”
I shot him twice in the chest.
The impact slammed him back through the doorway and he collapsed into the darkness of the office beyond. He went down hard and I could hear the crunch of elbows, skull, and heels as he struck the linoleum floor.
The moment stretched as a haze of gun smoke washed the air with a faint gray.
All I could see was the soles of his shoes, but after a single twitch he stopped moving. I didn’t trust it, though, and I kept my pistol on him as I moved into the room, crouched and pressed fingers to his throat.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I felt some of the tension leave me and I rose and went back into the main room, but I was frowning. The tips of the fingers I’d used to check his pulse were smeared with color and I sniffed it. I was right: stage makeup.
“Nice shot, boss,” Top said. He lowered his piece but didn’t put it away. He knelt down to check on Ollie, but his face showed his distaste for the effort wasted. “He’s alive. Maybe he’ll live long enough to hang. Traitorous prick.”
Skip was standing behind him, staring past me. He bent and picked up Ollie’s pistol and then retreated to stand beside the First Lady, who was staring in renewed horror.
“Jesus,” Skip breathed, his eyes fixed on O’Brien. “You actually killed him.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that sometimes happens when you shoot someone.”
“Shame you can’t collect the reward,” Skip said.
“What reward?”
He gave me a quirky grin. “For bagging El Mujahid, boss. Last I heard there was a million-dollar reward for him.”
I frowned, puzzled. “The hell are you talking about?”
Skip nodded past me. “O’Brien. He’s El Mujahid. You didn’t figure that out?”
I turned and glanced down at the big corpse, then looked back at Skip. “How the hell do you know that?”
Skip raised both guns. He put the barrel of one against the First Lady’s temple and pointed the other at my face.
“A little bird told me,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Son of a bitch.
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT TURNED BACK to face Amirah. Her hunger and hate were so strong that the metal wall between them felt paper-thin. He glanced down at his watch and felt his heart skip a beat. The team from Global Security should have been here by now.
“Are you expecting someone, Sebastian?” Amirah purred.
“You can’t win this,” he retorted. “I won’t let you destroy everything.”
Her face darkened. “Won’t let me? What does it matter what you want? It is the will of Allah that matters. That is the only thing that matters.”
Fury was beginning to burn away his grief. “You know, I’m getting so bloody tired of religious tirades, my dear. Why don’t I shoot you and then you can go and see your god.”
She ignored the threat. “There’s someone out here who wants to talk to you, Sebastian.”
He took a cautious half step forward as she moved back to allow him a better view. Down below the moans and screams had intensified. There was blood splashed on the walls as the infected who had transitioned first had now turned on those who had not yet succumbed. What he saw was a picture out of a nightmare, a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to terrible life; but that wasn’t what Amirah wanted to show him. Instead a second figure stepped into view.
It was Anah, a young woman Gault knew to be a cousin of El Mujahid. She had the same dreamy half-mad look as Amirah, and the same gray skin, but the young woman’s mouth was smeared with red and in her hands she held something so grotesque that Gault had to clamp a hand to his mouth to keep from vomiting.
Anah carried the head of Captain Zeller. The leader of the Global Security rescue team.
Gagging, Gault thrust the barrel of the pistol through the observation slot and fired shot after shot into Anah, punching holes through her chest and face, staggering her back to the metal rail and then blasting her over. Anah fell without a scream and crashed down into the mass of creatures fighting below.
“You mad bitch!” he screamed at Amirah and shot her. His first bullet hit her in the stomach. Amirah staggered back and her face twisted into a grimace of agony.
No . . .
Not pain. Amirah was laughing. She whirled and ran along the corridor as Gault fired after her, trying to hit her, needing to kill her, wanting her death. He hit her at least three more times until she was so far down the corridor that he could no longer get an angle for a useful shot. He knew that he’d hit her, he’d seen her robes fluff out with the impacts, had seen blood splash the walls. But Amirah hadn’t even slowed down . . . and as she ran she called his name in a mocking laugh.
The slide on Gault’s pistol locked back and he reeled away from the slot, gasping, blood roaring in his ears. With trembling fingers he fumbled for a new magazine and slapped it into place. Sweat coursed down his face and chest.
He had a flash of panic and pulled out his sat phone, but Toys did not answer. No help was coming. He was alone. Panic howled in his head.
Amirah knew about the secret passages he’d built into the place. If she and El Mujahid had been playing him then there was a good chance she’d somehow hacked into his computer. The network of hidden passages was on there. And, dammit, so were the detonation codes he had created to blow this place to atoms. Okay, that option was gone. Just as the rescue was gone.
He had two full magazines plus the one in the gun, which gave him about a third as many bullets as he would need even if every shot was a kill, and that was unlikely.
“Head shots, you bloody fool.” He cursed himself for wasting a chance to kill that witch.
Witch. He’d called her that so many times that now it came back to haunt him. It was more accurate a label than he had ever known. What she had done was the blackest kind of sorcery. A true deal with the devil, and it occurred to Gault that it hadn’t been cuckold’s horns that El Mujahid had worn. They were the king and queen of Hell. Damn them both.
He paused at a T-juncture in the corridor. To his left he could hear the hiss of hydraulics as someone—Amirah or one of her monsters—opened a doorway to his right. Okay, he thought, that simplifies things; and he took the other fork of the juncture.
There was only one more thing that he could do. One final chance left to stop Amirah’s doomsday scheme. At least the part of it that she wanted to launch here in the Middle East. He only hoped the American had been able to somehow warn the authorities before things got out of control over there. He rushed down the hallway, knowing that his one chance was slim, and even then he had almost no hope of surviving. Somehow it amused him to think that he might actually sacrifice himself to save the world.
“God . . . they really will think I’m a saint now,” he mused. He almost laughed as he raced along through the shadows.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:16 P.M.
I STARED AT Skip. “You?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What . . . you thought it was Dudley Do-Right over there?” He jerked his head at Ollie.
“You piece of shit,” growled Top, but Skip jabbed the First Lady with the pistol. She sat rigid and terrified, her eyes locked on mine, pleading silently for me to do something. But Skip held all the best cards.
“Put your piece down, boss,” Skip ordered. “Two fingers, nice and slow. Now kick it away. Good. The knife, too. You, too, Top. You even think about doing anything funny and I pop the lady first.”
“Why?” I demanded. “What’s your stake in all this?”
“Well,” he said with a grin, “if you’re wondering if I’ve embraced the teachings of the prophet Mohammad, then no. I’ve pretty much embraced ten million dollars in an offshore account.”
“You’re doing this for money?”
“Of course I’m doing it for money.”
“That doesn’t make sense . . . you fought side by side with us against these things.”
“Yeah, and it’s the best cover story in the world. And that whole ‘Taser’ thing was a setup. Cute, huh? Once you and the others went to explore the crab plant I slipped into the hidden passage. Oh, don’t look surprised. They downloaded the whole floor plan to me before we ever set out. We planned the whole thing via text messages—it went off like clockwork. I told them to take out one of the other guys with a liquid Taser and then I faked my own abduction. I had to fake my own burn with a lighter, but we all make sacrifices. The rest was window dressing to confuse things. I pop caps in a bunch of walkers, rub dust in my eyes to get the tears flowing, and then wait to be rescued. I should get a frickin’ Academy Award. That Courtland bitch bought it hook, line, and sinker. And if you’re wondering about the fight in the laboratory, I’d have made it out of there, too. There was an exit door behind the last meds chest, right near where I was standing. I’m sure Jerry Spencer will probably find it eventually, not that it’ll matter now. If that asswipe Dietrich had been another ten seconds slower I’d have ducked out as soon as you guys started getting chomped.”
“You’re a real piece of work.”
“Just doing my job. Funny thing is, I wasn’t even supposed to be the point man for this gig. Lieutenant Colonel Hanley was supposed to step up and lead Echo Team, with me as his backup, but then you come along and go all Jackie Chan on him. Ah well. More cash for me.”
“And Room Twelve . . . ?”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t let you interrogate the tech from the Delaware lab. That hit hadn’t been part of the plan and they weren’t ready for you. I never even got a chance to send a warning ’cause we were wheels up so fast. So I opened Room Twelve, popped a cap in the prisoner, and let the walkers out to play. If you guys hadn’t cleaned it up so fast I would have gotten there and played hero . . . but it worked out okay.”
“Don’t you realize the people you’re working with are trying to start a plague that will wipe out—”
He cut me off with a laugh. “Oh come on, Captain . . . you don’t buy any of that shit, do you. We fed you the clues. This was even timed to happen right before the Fourth so that there would be some concerns about this event. I was tickled pink when I heard that we were coming down here ’cause it meant that absolutely everything was falling into place. We gave you everything you need to stop the plague before it goes anywhere. All you have to do is spend a shitload of money on research and inoculation. That Chink doctor from the DMS is already working on a treatment. There are enough agents and cops here in Philly to keep the infection contained. None of this was ever going to get out of the center. You’ll be happy to know that was the last planned release of the plague. Nah . . . this isn’t about the end of the world, it’s just about the moolah. Always has been, always will be.”
“Ten million dollars sounds like a cheap price tag for your soul, Skip.”
“It’ll do. Especially where I’m going. I can live well and stay off the radar for the rest of my life.”
“What about all the people who’ve died? All the DMS agents, the people they turned into walkers at the crab plant . . .”
I looked for a flicker of conscience in his eyes but there was nothing. He was as dead inside as one of the walkers. “The fuck do I care? I’m only a player. You want to lay a guilt trip on someone, boss, blame the asshole you just shot. Yeah, that really is El Mujahid. Made up to look like a Secret Service agent. I worked on getting his papers and ID ready before my boss transferred me to the DMS. Everything worked fine, too.”
“Your boss. You mean Robert Howell Lee?”
Skip blinked but recovered quickly. “Good call. Maybe you’re better than I thought, not that it matters. You can have Lee. I don’t give a shit. He’s a weasel. Me . . . I’m outta here.”
“At least tell me something, Skip,” I said. “Who started all of this? I’m betting on some pharmaceutical company, with the terrorists as hired help.”
He blinked again. “Okay, points for that. Yeah, this is all big-business shit.”
“Care to share which companies?”
“As if,” he said, then half shrugged. He kept one gun on me but lowered the other and moved forward a couple of paces and put the barrel of his second piece against the back of Top’s head. “Actually, I don’t know much more than you do. All I was told is that some big pharmacy company is footing the bill.” Again he nodded past me to where El Mujahid lay in a pool of blood. “Somebody’s going to make a lot of money.”
“Maybe, but they won’t be able to spend much of it. We’ll catch them.”
He snorted. “The DMS might, Captain, but you won’t. And even if they do, what’s it to me? I’m a contract player here. I got no personal stake in this no matter how it turns out, and when the shit really hits the fan I’ll be far, far away in Happily Ever After Land. I’ll bet it won’t even make the papers where I’ll be.”
“I get out of this, kid,” said Top softly, “you’d better keep looking over your shoulder ’cause one of these days I’ll be right there.”
“Wow. I’m really scared.” He jabbed Top again with the gun. “You take a run at me, old man, and I’ll cut off your balls and make you eat them.”
There was a renewed rattle of gunfire from down the hall. Out in the Bell Chamber.
Grace.
Skip smiled. “I’ll bet we can all guess what’s happening out there. Zombie madness, and on national TV. That’s gonna be some real shit. But that’s also my cue to get the hell out of Dodge. A little hysteria is very useful, don’t you think, Captain?”
“For someone who’s supposed to be a cold-blooded killer you’re doing a lot of talking. What’s the problem, Skip? You getting cold feet about capping your teammates?”
He laughed. “Man, that’s precious. You’re right out of Psychology 101. Try to manipulate the emotions of the hostage taker by establishing a bond between him and his captives. Please. No, Captain, I wanted to make sure that I got the chance to get a little payback for you kicking my ass the other day. I’m not huge on the whole forgive-and-forget thing.”
“You want to go another round? Sure. You want to do it hand to hand or are you looking for a knife fight? According to your file you’re quite a hotshot with a blade . . .”
“Get real. You think I’m an idiot? I know you can take me in a fair fight. Why do you think I’m not fighting fair, asshole?”
“Okay . . . then you have me confused here, kid. What do you have in mind?”
“I want to see you get your ass kicked by someone you can’t take.”
“Oh? And who would that be?”
“Me . . .” hissed a guttural voice behind me.
I whirled.
El Mujahid stood hulking in the doorway. And, yes, he was dead. Not that it much mattered at the moment. He smiled at me and bared his teeth.
From behind me, in a mocking voice, Skip said, “Now ain’t that a bitch.”
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT HAD TO crawl through two access tunnels and climb down four cold metal ladders to reach the very heart of the facility, far below the Bunker. He was making for a set of controls that he’d had built into the Bunker from the beginning, just in case all other options failed. He was careful not to make a sound in case Amirah or some of her creatures—alive or dead—had followed him. It was nearly black down here, with security lights spaced out only every hundred feet, so he had to pick his way. It was also terribly hot down here.
Below the Bunker was a deep drill hole that had punched into a lava stream buried far beneath the desert. The geothermal energy that powered the Bunker was virtually limitless, and a series of six vents—each a half-mile-long segment of reinforced piping—kept the heat converters from building up too much of a charge. If even half of them collapsed the venting would still keep the station safe from a critical overload. But there was a single point where they all joined: a huge vertical shaft that was bored straight down into the cathedral roof of the lava chamber. Superheated gasses rose up into the shaft and then dispersed through the six upward-slanting vents. Heat always rises, and that kept the engines turning and at the same time created a vulnerability because heat could only vent if nothing prevented it. Block the vents—all of them—and the heat would be trapped below the generators. With lava funneling that much heat it would be a matter of minutes before the generators either melted to slag or blew up. In either case it would trip all of the Bunker’s fail-safe devices—protocols that were hardwired into the station’s structure with so many redundancies that even a deliberate attempt to disable them would trigger them. Once triggered the fail-safe would send electrical signals to explosive bolts that would slam every door shut and then burst-weld them into place. The fail-safe system would then start a series of asbestos-coated alloy fans that would take the superheated gasses and blow them into every room and chamber in the Bunker. Gault had designed the Bunker that way to keep his pathogens from escaping. He really did not want to destroy the world. All he wanted was to become the richest man in it.
He crawled along the tunnel, pouring sweat, inching toward a spot that could only be found by touch: markings like Braille that Gault himself had etched into the plate steel. Behind that plate were six hydraulic levers. Each one would cause about a ton of rock to crash down onto a separate vent pipe. Easy as pie.
Forty feet to go.
Thirty. Twenty. Then he heard it. A voice whispering in the darkness somewhere behind him.
“Sebastian,” she called. Low and sweet and dreadful.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday July 4; 12:19 P.M.
I STAGGERED BACK from El Mujahid as he lumbered forward out of the darkened office.
“Mother of God,” I heard Top whisper.
The makeup on El Mujahid’s face had run, giving him a weirdly melted look. It revealed a wicked cut, like a knife slash, that bisected his face. It was the first time I’d been this close to him. He had to be six five and two-fifty if he was an ounce. He pulled off the jacket he’d worn as part of his Secret Service disguise, then jerked the tie loose and tore that off, dropping it on the floor. His white shirt was soaked with blood, and he touched the bullet holes. They were in the right place, they had to have clipped his heart. He smiled.
“It worked,” he said in wonder. “My princess has found the way . . .”
Skip said, “Here’s an incentive for you, boss. My employers may not have been trying to bring about the end of the world . . . but this asshole? Shit, he’s one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. He gets out of this place and it really will be game over.”
El Mujahid snarled at Skip, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Skip staring at the big terrorist with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Then I noticed that Top was looking straight at me, his dark eyes intense and unblinking. My hands were at my side and as I turned my face toward El Mujahid I curled the thumb and pinky of my left hand so that I showed three fingers. Then I curled the ring finger up, then the forefinger. Then the index, hoping that Top had read me the right way.
Abruptly I lunged at El Mujahid and chopped him across the throat with as hard a knife-hand blow as I’d ever used on a human being. At the same instant Top pivoted, his speed powered by adrenaline and fear and a hell of a lot of indignation. He grabbed Skip’s wrist with one hand and drove his opposite elbow back into the young man’s stomach. Skip’s finger clutched in a spasm of pain and the bullet burned across the side of Top’s temple. Top bellowed in pain but he came up off the floor and tackled Skip, driving him halfway across the room so that they both crashed onto a desk. The pistol flew into a corner.
Skip shoved Top back with a curse and with a shake of his wrist a knife dropped from a sleeve holster into the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth to taunt Top, but First Sergeant Sims moved forward in a blur and slammed into Skip. They hit the desk and then rolled off on the far side and out of sight.
I couldn’t go help. I had my own problems.
The blow that I’d used on El Mujahid should have killed him. At very least it should have crippled him. It would have done that to any man.
But El Mujahid was no longer a man. He coughed but then he expanded his chest and I could actually hear the fragments of his shattered hyoid bone click together. It was the creepiest sound I’d ever heard.
In a hoarse rasp of a voice he growled, “My princess has made me immortal. Praise Allah!” His eyes had looked dazed and dull when he’d first come out of the room, but I could see them becoming more focused. I didn’t understand it. If he was a walker, then why was he able to talk? Or think?
He took a step toward me. The first step was wobbly, as if he was uncertain how to use his body. But the second step was firmer. The third step showed no instability at all.
Crap.
His face took on an expression that was half triumphant leer and half naked hunger, and a fanatical light burned like a solar flare in his eyes. “Allah is the only God and I am his wrath on Earth!”
“Whatever,” I said as I dodged to one side and kicked him on the meat of the thigh with the steel toe of my shoe, a blow that would cripple anyone. But again it did nothing to him.
“It’s funny,” he said in Farsi, “but it doesn’t even hurt. Oh, Amirah . . . how I love you.”
I made a lunge for my fallen pistol but El Mujahid leaped at me. Any awkwardness he might have experienced upon returning to life was gone. For all his size he moved with cat quickness and he body-blocked me away from the piece and kicked the gun under a desk. I slewed around and came up into a fighting crouch. Okay, I thought, c’mon, Joe, you’ve done this before. Break the neck and you stop these buggers.
So I jumped in and tried to grab his chin and hair. Most people have only seen this move in movies. They won’t recognize it when someone tries it on them, and it’s such a fast move that by the time they figure it out they’re on the cold side of being dead.
Unfortunately for me El Mujahid wasn’t a novice. He parried my lunge and hit me in the ribs with a short chopping punch that lifted me completely off the ground; then he combined off that and planted an overhand right that nearly took my head off. I managed to get a shoulder up in time to save my head, but El Mujahid was a tank and his punch dropped me. I landed hard and immediately tucked into a sideways roll and barely managed to avoid a stamp that would have crushed my skull.
The First Lady was screaming over and over again and I wondered if her mind had snapped.
I came out of my roll on fingertips and toes and tried to reach for the .38 on my ankle, but he rushed me with a flying tackle that sent us both rolling over and over across the floor. At the end of the roll I managed to get a knee up between us and braced it against his chest as he tried to pull me into a bear hug. With his arms he’d have splintered my back. I drove my shoulders back and used the greater power of my legs to break his grab. He skidded back and I again went for my pistol, this time getting it out; but El Mujahid threw himself forward like a dolphin jumping out of the water onto the side of a pool. It was a sloppy move, all momentum, but it worked and he made a big reach and swatted the pistol out of my hand.
So I kicked him in the face and back-rolled to my feet.
I had my back to the wall and he was between me and any guns. He rose slowly, head down, shoulders hunched, hands forward and out. This was a son of a bitch who really knew how to fight. Without rules, just react and destroy. Like me.
Past him I could see parts of the tussle that was going on behind the desk. Legs and arms, and a lot of cursing. I had no idea who was winning that fight.
El Mujahid stalked me, cutting left and right to try and box me into the corner. Against most opponents a corner is a pretty good place to make a stand, it allows for a lot of options when flight is no longer in the mix; but with a fighter like this bruiser it would be a death trap.
He leered at me and bit the air with a clack of teeth. “I think I’ll take a bite out of you,” he said, pitching it to sound like a joke. I wasn’t laughing.
I could still hear gunfire and screams coming from the Bell Chamber. It must be one hell of a battle in there. Would Grace survive it, or had she already fallen? Would she rise as one of the mindless walkers or as a new and improved thinking monster like the one I faced?
What would Church and the President do? Let everyone in the Liberty Bell Center kill each other and then torch the whole place? Could the President risk any other response, even with his wife here?
Then I realized that the First Lady was no longer screaming. El Mujahid noticed, too, and we both turned to see that she had picked up my .45 and was pointing it at the big terrorist. She fired, but in her panic she jerked the trigger instead of squeezing it and the gun bucked upward and the shot punched a hole in the ceiling.
I rushed in her direction, wanting that damn gun, but El Mujahid lunged in to cut me off, pawing at me with a fast grab. I parried it, but it was a fake and he snaked the other hand in and caught me by the sleeve of my suit jacket.
The First Lady got off another shot but it just tore a chunk out of El Mujahid’s hip.
He jerked me forward with such force that I flew off the ground, and he hit me with an elbow shot that broke a black bomb in my head. I sagged in his grip and as he bent toward me I could feel his hot breath on my exposed throat.
Gault and Amirah / The Bunker
GAULT SCRAMBLED FORWARD in a panic, feeling for the etched markings as Amirah’s eerie voice floated through the darkness toward him, louder each time she called his name.
“Sebastian!” She drew it out, making it a perverse song.
His fingers scrabbled across an uneven spot on the wall and he stopped, fumbling at it. Yes! He felt for the upper-right corner of the panel and then punched it with the side of his fist. The corner folded inward and he gripped the edges and tore the whole panel away. A small red light flicked on inside the compartment, illuminating the rubber-coated handles of six big levers.
“Sebastian!”
“Witch,” he breathed and grabbed the first handle and pulled. It was much harder than he thought it would be, and the angle was bad. He had to stand hunched over and throw his entire weight backward to move the handle. On the first pull it only moved five inches.
“Bastard!” he growled and tried again, screaming with effort. This time the handle tilted toward him and locked into place. There was an anticlimactic silence for a few seconds and then far away there was a heavy rumbling that he felt more than heard.
He grabbed the second handle and again it took him two pulls to lock it down.
“Sebastian!”
Her voice was close. God, he thought . . . God!
Even as the rumbling started for the second collapsing vent pipe he threw himself back with the third, and this one locked down on the first try. The rumbling started at once.
“Sebastian!” Now there was a different tone in her voice. Perhaps a faint flicker of doubt. He grabbed the fourth lever and pulled. It was so hard, so stiff that it took him five tries to lock it down, but finally it clicked and the rumbling started.
“Sebastian!” He could hear the hurried scuff of her feet and her voice definitely had a note of alarm in it. It gave him strength to hear the fear and he tackled the fifth lever with a will and in two grunting pulls it locked down. Already the ambient temperature was rising as the superheated gasses began recoiling from blocked vents. A deep red glow was reflected through the steel passages and it bathed him in a bloody light.
“Sebastian!”
He turned and she was there, not twenty feet away. Her robes were torn and she was covered in blood. God knows whose blood it was. In the fiery glow of the lava she looked like a monster from hell itself. The blood on her lips and hands was black and her eyes were so shadowed that she looked more like a skull than a woman whose beauty had once made him gasp with but a single slanting glance.
“Listen to me, Sebastian,” she said, her voice thick and heavy. “Stop this . . . I can share Generation Twelve with you. If you truly embrace the Koran and the teachings of the Prophet I can make you one of us; I can make you one of God’s immortals.”
“You’re insane, Amirah. You’ve turned yourself into a monster.” He put his hand on the sixth lever.
“I am Seif al Din,” she retorted, her dark eyes flashing. “Don’t you understand? I am the plague, I am the Sword of the Faithful. We don’t need laboratories or test subjects anymore. I am the breath of God that will blow across the entire world. The faithless will die and the faithful will become immortals. Like me. Like El Mujahid.” She reached a hand toward him. “Like you, Sebastian . . . if you only accept.”
He shook his head and tears spilled down his cheeks. “I’m a greedy heartless bastard, Amirah . . . but I’m not a monster.”
Amirah spread her hands and smiled at him. “Am I a monster, my love?” she said in that old familiar voice that turned a knife in his heart. It was so bizarrely at odds with the bloodstained thing she had become.
“Yes, you effing well are!” The answering voice came from the shadow behind her. Toys.
Amirah turned to look behind her and there was Toys, his clothes torn, his face streaked with blood, his eyes swimming with pain. He leaned one bloody hand against the wall and with the other he held his pistol aimed at her. The barrel trembled.
Amirah hissed at him; and Toys managed a mean little smile and hissed back. He looked past her at Gault and at the lever he held in his hands. Toys took a ragged breath.
“Do it,” he said.
Amirah swung back toward Gault.
“No!”
“God,” he said softly as the mountains rumbled around him and the heat scorched the air between them. “I loved you, Amirah.”
“Sebastian . . .” They both said it, Amirah and Toys.
Gault tightened his grip around the handle and tensed his muscles.
“God help me,” he murmured, “but I will always love you.”
She lunged at him as Toys fired the gun and Gault threw his weight back and pulled the lever. Their screams were lost in the rumble as tons of rock collapsed onto the last pipe. In the bowels of the earth, in the furnace of hell, the hand of Satan clutched its fiery fingers into a fist and punched upward toward the Bunker.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:21 P.M.
HIS BREATH WAS as hot as the wind from hell and I recoiled from it, twisting in his grip, turning my hips as hard and fast as I could. I drove my knee up into his crotch and at the same time drove the stiffened tips of my fingers up under his jaw, crushing tissue and cartilage above the Adam’s apple. Another killing blow that I knew couldn’t kill him; but it jolted him so that his head jerked back just enough for me to hit him right over his left ear. Once, twice, three times, rocking his whole body with each shot. I could hear his neck bones grind with the third shot and then El Mujahid suddenly flung me away from him. Maybe when he felt his vertebre start to shift he realized his one vulnerability.
I landed hard and tried a back roll but I didn’t have the room and crashed into a filing cabinet so I ended up nearly standing on my head. My own neck sent a lance of pain through my shoulder and back, but I bit down on it, planted my palms on the floor, and hopped backward onto my feet. It wasn’t gold medal gymnastics but it got me right side up and I pivoted fast as El Mujahid rushed at me again.
The First Lady shot again and missed and then the slide locked back on the gun.
I knew I couldn’t keep this up. I was getting tired and I was getting hurt and this son of a bitch was immortal. He was a monster who couldn’t feel pain. Sooner or later he was going to wear me down and then he’d go to work on me with his teeth.
Across the room I heard someone howl in pain and couldn’t tell if it was Skip or Top, and I couldn’t spare the second it would take to look.
I crabbed sideways to circle him, but he lunged forward to cut the line. That was fine because as he dodged in I jumped sideways to pass him on his left. His sweeping grab clipped my ear and though it rang my chimes it didn’t stop me. I used the impact to spin into a sloppy pirouette that sent me halfway across the office toward one of the artist’s tables. At the far end of the table I’d seen what I wanted, but El Mujahid was already coming at me, his face almost black with rage and his teeth snapping as he rushed forward.
Rage, in an opponent, is a very useful thing. It makes smart people do stupid things. If you backpedal from the enraged attacker you simply get smashed against a wall and then he proceeds to beat you to a pulp—or, in this case, tear you apart with his teeth. So I didn’t backpedal; instead I went forward to meet him. Not chest to chest like a pair of bulls. I lunged in and down and tucked myself into a cannonball and rolled hard at his lower legs, hitting him full onto his left shin and clipping his right. With his greater upper-body weight and my two hundred pounds of rolling mass he went flying forward and smashed facefirst into a row of metal cabinets.
I came out of my roll, pivoted, and leaped back toward the artist’s table, grabbing at the item I’d seen: a big paper cutter that was bolted to the metal tabletop. I yanked the cutter arm up, grabbed the handle with both hands, and surged my weight to my right. The bolt that hinged the big blade to the cutter board was not designed for sideways resistance and the whole cutter arm tore off with a loud snap of broken fittings. I whirled and El Mujahid was already in motion, coming hard and fast, deadly and fearless, completely unhurt by the collision with the cabinets.
Again I rushed to meet him in the middle of his lunge, but this time I swung the big cutter like a sword, the curved blade whistling through the air. I caught him square, right on the left side of his neck, and the edge of the blade bit deep. The impact jerked El Mujahid to an abrupt stop and he goggled at me, his eyes and mouth gaping in shock. His fingers reached up to feel the heavy blade buried into muscle and tendon. It hadn’t cut all the way through his neck, but the very edge of the blade must have buried itself in the big man’s spinal cord.
Half an inch was enough.
His immense strength immediately began to melt away as his muscles lost all order and control. He dropped to his knees like a supplicant preparing to abase himself. Gasping for breath, I braced one foot against his body and then ripped the handle free in a spray of blood.
“You can’t stop the will of God . . .” he said with a throat that was filled with blood.
“This was never about God’s will, you stupid bastard!” I growled as I raised it above my shoulder and then with a scream of pure rage I swung the blade again.
The blade sheared all the way through what was left of his neck and the force of the swing tore the cutter from my hands. It buried itself point first in the linoleum floor and stood there, quivering.
El Mujahid’s head bounced and then rolled to a stop, his wild eyes staring with infinite shock up to the heavens.
I staggered back and almost fell.
The First Lady screamed.
Then I heard another cry of pain and turned, my body tingling with nervous tension, my mind reeling from what I’d just done, and I saw Skip Tyler coming toward me, a bloody knife in one hand. He looked at me, and then down at the terrorist. He smiled with bloody teeth.
“Well,” he said hoarsely, “aren’t you the goddamn hero.”
And then his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he fell flat on his face.
There were half a dozen pencils jammed into a tight grouping in his back, buried deep into the right kidney.
A bloody, trembling shape climbed up from behind the desk. Top was covered with cuts and painted with blood.
“Tough little son of a bitch,” he said. He coughed and slumped down to his knees, catching himself with one arm on the desk. The First Lady and I both rushed to him. She got there first and she helped him down into a sloppy sitting position. Her face was as flushed as his. I wobbled toward them and then my legs gave out and I almost fell. Top waved me off. “I’ll live, Cap’n. But . . . gimme a second to catch my breath.” He lowered his head and sat there, dripping blood onto the floor. The First Lady stroked his hair and held on to him, both giving and taking comfort.
“Did . . . you get him?” a voice asked, and I turned to see Ollie Brown peering up at me with one half-opened eye.
I tottered over and sank down beside him. He was in bad shape. I looked at Top and shook my head. Top winced and hung his head.
“Hey, kid,” I said, putting my hand on Ollie’s shoulder. “You hold on now.”
“Bastard blindsided me. O’Brien . . . son of a bitch was the—” he began and then coughed bloody phlegm onto the floor. “I should have . . . figured it out. S-sorry for letting you down.”
His voice was almost gone. I took his hand and held it just as I’d held Roger Jefferson’s, and like Jefferson, Ollie held on tightly as if through it he could cling to life.
“He fooled us all. It wasn’t your fault. If anything, Ollie,” I said, “it was mine.”
He shook his head. “Was it . . . Skip? Was he the one?”
“Yeah.”
“You get him, too?”
“Top did.”
“He had that baby face.” He smiled weakly. “Guess . . . guess it was easier to think it was me.”
“I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Ollie.”
He coughed. “Shit happens, Cap.” He tried to turn his head. “I can’t hear . . . gunshots. Is it over?”
I listened and he was right. There was only silence from the Bell Chamber. I turned to look down at Ollie, wanting to give him some comfort, but for him it was already over. His eyes were open but he was looking into a whole different world.
I bowed my head and held his hand.
Behind me, down the hallway, I could hear new sounds. Running steps. Voices. It took a lot for me to raise my head and look as several figures rushed into the room. Bunny was first, his face streaked with blood and his pistol in a two-hand grip. Gus Dietrich was right behind him. And then she was there.
Grace.
Alive. All of them, alive.
“Joe!” she cried and rushed to me and I pulled her to me, down on the floor.
“We stopped it, boss,” growled Bunny, who was bending over Top, his face lined with concern.
Grace wrapped her arms around me and I held Ollie’s hand—a man I’d mistrusted and wronged—and I wept for all of us.
The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:28 P.M.
A FRESH WAVE of Secret Service agents were the first to enter the Liberty Bell Center. Dressed in hazmat suits, they surged through the building until they found the First Lady. They whisked her away through a back door. Paramedics came to get us. Bunny lingered in the doorway to the office where Ollie and the others lay dead. EMTs worked on Top Sims, putting compresses on over a dozen slashes and stab wounds before loading him onto a gurney. Bunny hovered over them like a mother hen, giving them evil looks every time he thought they were a little too rough. He followed them out, offering a string of suggestions on how to do their jobs. They were probably happy their protective suits hid their faces.
I later learned that Skip Tyler had sixteen broken bones and a ruptured liver, apart from all the pencils Top had rammed through his kidney. Must have been one hell of a fight, but I was only marginally sorry I missed it. I’d had enough of violence. Maybe enough for the rest of my life. Even the Warrior who lurked in the back of my soul was glutted for now.
Ollie Brown and the fallen Secret Service agents were zippered into black rubber body bags. Skip and El Mujahid were left to lie where they were. Forensics teams would need to take pictures first. They could rot for all I cared. The EMTs all stopped and stared at the two pieces of El Mujahid. They gave me strange looks and didn’t get too close.
Grace sat beside me, her hand on my shoulder, as the EMTs plastered me with bandages and ice packs. When they were done, I said, “How bad was it?”
She was a long time answering that. “Bad,” was all she said.
I took her hand and held it. Her fingers were cold as ice.
“Rudy?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
She nodded. “Safe.”
When I felt able to walk she and I went back to the Bell Chamber. Brierly saw us and came over. “They tell me you and your man saved the First Lady.”
“Men,” I corrected. “First Sergeant Bradley Sims and Lieutenant Oliver Brown. They both did their part and Ollie died in action.” I paused. “I wanted you to know that Ollie died serving his country.”
Brierly nodded. “Thanks, Captain. He was a good man.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.”
We shook hands and he took Grace aside for a conference call with Church. “I’ll be back,” she said.
“I still owe you a drink.”
“Yes,” she said, giving me a sad little smile, “you bloody well do.”
There were no more crowds. The victims lay in rows and men in white plastic suits were draping sheets over them and searching for identification. Someone had rigged blue Tyvek tarps over all of the windows, but the crowds were gone; all of Independence Mall had been cleared and the whole city was under martial law. The National Guard occupied Center City and dozens of choppers packed with federal agents, scientists, medical personnel, and a lot of other folks were descending on the town.
Rudy sat on the edge of the podium, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, the ends of his tie hanging limply from either side of his throat. He looked up at me and started to offer his hand, but both of our hands were stained with blood. He withdrew his hand and sighed.
“Dios mio, cowboy.”
“Yeah.”
“Bunny told me that it was Skip after all. Not Ollie. We were wrong.”
“Everyone was. Even Church thought that it might be Ollie. Ollie looked best for it. These bastards probably picked Skip as much for his innocent face as for his greedy black heart. They fooled us and it almost cost everyone here their lives.”
I sat down next to him and for a long time neither of us said a word. His gaze was fixed on a point across the room and I followed his line of sight to where a man in a Hawaiian shirt lay sprawled. Someone had rammed the broken end of a wooden flagpole through his eye socket.
“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Rudy said at length. “I mean, I’ve counseled hundreds of cops, but . . .” He shook his head.
I understood and I could hear the deep hurt in his voice. But what could I say? We’d all had to do our parts; and I knew there would be long summer nights to come where we’d sit out in his backyard and watch the stars wheel overhead and drink beer as we talked it through. But that time wasn’t now and we both knew it. Across the room some of the Secret Service agents were standing like ghosts, their faces pale, their eyes haunted, as they tried not to look at the bodies lying under sheets.
“It must have been terrible for them,” Rudy said.
“For you, too, man.”
He shook his head. “I mostly watched. I . . . I’m not sure I could have done what they did. They had to shoot congressmen, civilians . . .”
“You blame them for gunning down these people?”
“God, no. They’re heroes. Every one of them.”
I nodded. “They don’t think so.”
“No,” he agreed.
“They’re marked,” I said. “This is what you were talking about. The look on their faces, in their eyes. It’ll never go away. Violence always leaves a mark. You taught me that.”
He sighed. “We ask so much of the people who protect us. Firemen, cops, soldiers . . . They sign up to do some good, to make a difference, but we sometimes ask too much.”
“They’re warriors,” I said softly. “Some of them will be stronger because of today. For some people battle is a clarifying experience. It forces all of the senses to come awake, it makes you become totally aware, totally alive.”
“And some of them will be broken because of today,” he said quietly. “Not everyone has a warrior soul. You taught me that, Joe. Some people have only so much courage, only so much tolerance for violence, even when it’s for the right cause. For some of these people this may be a breaking point. Today might kill some of those young folks. Not right away, maybe not for twenty years, but a few of them may never shake the memory of what they had to do today, what they were forced to do. They’ll know all the logic about how it had to happen, how they had no choice; and for a while that will keep them steady . . . but some of them will never survive this. Not ultimately.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I knew that he was right. Being a hero doesn’t mean that a person can become comfortable with being a killer, too.
“They’re going to need you, Rudy.”
“I can’t help them all.”
“They couldn’t save all the people here,” I said. Rudy closed his eyes for a moment, then he stood up and looked down at me.
“And what about you, cowboy? Have you reached your limit?”
When I didn’t answer, he sighed and nodded. He patted my shoulder then turned and walked over to the group of agents. I watched him go, saw the process of change that happens when he goes from being my friend Rudy to Dr. Sanchez. He always seems bigger, taller. A rock for those who need something to cling to. But I knew the truth: he, too, was marked, and like the rest of us he would carry this with him forever.
So . . . what about me? I wondered. I could already feel the shock ebbing within me. As the adrenaline washed its way out of my bloodstream my deep grief and horror was dipping lower and lower. In the reeds there in the back of my mind the Warrior was already beginning to sharpen his knife again. I knew it, I could feel it.
I looked at the agents, and all of them looked so young and so hurt. Only one looked back at me and held my gaze. He was in his late twenties, not all that much younger than me, but his eyes were older than his face. His expression reflected less shock than the others. He read my face and I read his, and we exchanged a brief nod that none of the others saw, or if they did then they didn’t understand it. They weren’t of the same species as we were. The young agent turned back and listened to Rudy, but I was sure that he was already working through the experience in his own head. The way I was. The way warriors do. He and I did not need to be marked by our experiences. We were born with that mark.