He entered the hospital building on high alert, his right hand close to the MP5 concealed in the duffel bag slung over his shoulder, but nothing appeared to be amiss. Despite the language barrier, he managed to convey to the woman at the reception desk that he was looking for the CDC team, and a few minutes later, he opened the door to the conference room where the disease detectives had set up a command post.
The room was a hive of activity. Five people-Caucasians all, wearing familiar American clothes-were hastily unpacking computer and laboratory equipment from a stack of plastic containers lined up near the back wall. There was no sign of Sara.
A kindly looking older man noticed him. “Can I help you?”
King frowned. He hadn’t anticipated having to deal with Sara’s co-workers. The last thing he needed right now was to be given the runaround. He strode across the room, getting close enough to the man to be able to speak in low voice, barely louder than a whisper. “I need to speak with Dr. Fogg. It’s urgent.”
The man flashed a patient smile that suggested he was used to hearing people make such claims for the sake of expediency. “I’m Kerry Frey, Dr. Fogg’s assistant in charge of personnel. She’s busy right now.”
“I need to speak with her. I…” He took a deep breath, wondering how much to reveal. “My name is Jack Sigler. She asked me to come here.”
A gleam of recognition dawned in the other man’s eyes. “So you’re Jack. Sara has spoken of you. She’s with the patient in the isolation room on the fourth floor…”
Frey’s voice trailed off as something else in the room grabbed his attention. King turned, following the direction of the other man’s gaze to the door through which he had just entered.
Because he was trained to deal with surprises, King did not lapse into the same paralysis that now afflicted Frey, but he was nevertheless taken aback by the pair of figures, all in black from the soles of their combat boots to the tops of the balaclavas which almost completely covered their faces. A curse formed on his lips, but before he could speak the word, the two figures, in perfect synchronization, each tossed something into the room.
“Shit!”
Even though the objects were tumbling through the air, King recognized them immediately. Black metal tubes about three inches long, an inch in diameter, and perforated with a Swiss cheese pattern of holes.
Flash-bangs! Shit!
There was no time to seek cover, no time to even shout a warning. King did the only thing he could think of: he dropped to the floor, curling up like a hedgehog. He pressed his face into his thighs, and covered his ears with his forearms.
Suddenly, the world was transformed into pure light and noise. It was like being inside a lightning bolt. The flash of the magnesium/ammonium nitrate pyrotechnic charge in the M84 stun grenade lit up every fiber of King’s body; even with his eyes covered, he “saw” the flare as a red-yellow blaze. Simultaneously, the detonation produced a wave of sound that drove through his head like a freight train.
But King had been trained to deal with the after-effects of a flash-bang; he knew how to cope with the disorientation of sensory overload, and more importantly, knew the consequences of not taking immediate defensive action.
When he opened his eyes, the room seemed dark, as if all the lights had been switched off, but King could see two shapes moving through the room. One of the figures stopped and a tongue of flame erupted from his outstretched arm. Even through the ringing in his ears, King could hear the sound of gunfire.
His hand found the grip of his MP5 and he triggered a burst in the direction of the nearest gunmen. The shots hit center-mass, driving the man back a few steps but he didn’t go down.
Body armor. Shit, shit, shit!
King got his feet under him and scrambled to the back of the room. He could just make out the chest-high stack of equipment crates, and while he knew they probably wouldn’t stop a bullet, they would at least afford him a degree of concealment. He crouched low, scanning both angles of approach, and waited for the killers to make their move.
The attack didn’t come.
His vision and hearing were both returning by degrees, but neither sense gave him any hint of what was happening on the other side of stacked containers. No more shots were fired, and if the gunmen were speaking to each other, their voices were too soft for him to discern. Shouldering the MP5, he rose out of his crouch for just an instant, and peered over the top of the barrier.
The shooters were gone. King cautiously emerged from concealment, sweeping the room with the barrel of his machine pistol, but his first assessment was correct; the assault force had finished their grisly task and fallen back. King was alone with the dead.
He spied the unmoving form of the older man he had first spoken with. A ragged hole had been torn in his chest, almost certainly the result of a several bullets in a tight grouping.
Kerry Frey, he thought. He had a name. He probably had a family and friends. He worked with Sara…
Sara!
King started for the exit, but before he could cross half the distance, he saw another pair grenades sail through the air in the room. Not flash-bangs this time, but cylinders-like stubby aerosol cans-gray in color, marked with purple bands.
Incendiary grenades.
Shit.
5.
Fulbright thrust Sara behind him and then snapped off a couple shots in the direction of the masked gunmen. Despite openly wielding firearms, the men seemed caught off guard. They fell back, out of view and did not reappear for several seconds. Fulbright, on the other hand, had reacted almost without thinking.
He expected this, Sara thought. He knew this attack was coming.
But there was no time to give voice to her suspicions. The man she suspected of being a CIA officer gripped her arm and all but dragged her away from the gunmen and, she hoped, toward safety. She looked over her shoulder and saw the two doctors seemingly paralyzed by the unexpected violence, and then they were lost from view as Fulbright pulled her through a doorway into a stairwell which was already crowded with people evacuating in response to the fire alarm.
Sara immediately turned toward the descending flight, but an insistent tug on her arm drew her in the other direction. Up.
“My team.”
Fulbright’s voice, like his expression, was grim. “What do you think that explosion was? If your team is still alive, there’s nothing we can do to help them. I need to get you out of here.”
Still alive? If? Sara shook her head. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.
As they climbed the stairs, pushing through the fleeing horde, Fulbright took a phone from his shirt pocket and made a call. “It’s me. Things have gone to shit here. I need air evac, ASAP.” Then, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, he added: “Five minutes ago would be nice.”
As the phone disappeared back into his pocket, Sara managed to get out a question. “What the hell is going on?”
Fulbright glanced back at her, his face stony and determined. His expression made her think of Jack; she desperately wished that he was the one leading her confidently through this crisis. She half expected Fulbright to dismiss the inquiry, but he surprised her. “That woman was exposed to something-some kind of pathogen. Something that can be made into a weapon.”
The information stimulated the analytical part of her brain, and for a moment, thoughts of grief and concern for her own safety were relegated to secondary priority. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this? We could have had security in place to prevent this. Hell, we should have airlifted her back to Atlanta.”
“I didn’t expect this.” Fulbright’s tone was self-effacing. “I should have, but I didn’t think they’d try anything like this.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him, but that wasn’t the important question. “Who are they?”
Fulbright turned his gaze forward, steering her around another landing-the eighth floor-and kept climbing. The flow of people responding to the fire alarm had dried up; evidently, everyone on the uppermost floors had already exited. “I think it’s Nexus Genetics, the company Felice Carter works for. They sent her out there to find something like this, prehistoric genetic material, an ancient virus. But something went wrong. The expedition must have been exposed to something. That’s all I know really.”