“These men were prisoners?” Chapel asked.
“Need to know,” Banks said. In other words, Chapel wasn’t cleared to even know that the prisoners were in fact prisoners.
“The DoD refers to them as detainees,” Hollingshead said.
Ah, Chapel thought. Prisoners, yes. But not criminals incarcerated in a prison. Individuals held, most likely without trial, for unspecified reasons. That suggested they were terrorists, or at least that they possessed information regarding terrorism, and had been held under extraordinary rendition.
Chapel bit his lip. He was already jumping to conclusions and the briefing had just started. The first thing he’d learned during his military intelligence training was to never assume anything.
“Six of the individuals escaped from the facility. The seventh is presumed dead. Why we presume this is—”
“Need to know,” Banks jumped in.
Hollingshead nodded. “The six who left the facility were tracked to the best of our ability, of course, and we are very good at that sort of thing. Two of them were picked up en route and… neutralized. The remaining four were followed by satellite reconnaissance as far as a train station in Rhinecliff, New York, where we picked them up on a closed-circuit camera.” He pressed another button and the television screen flickered to life, showing grainy black-and-white footage of a train platform.
Chapel leaned forward to get a better look.
Four men were on the platform. They paced back and forth, acting agitated. It was hard to tell them apart — they all had shaggy hair and beards and their clothes were little more than rags. A train pulled up to the platform and one of them got on. The other three didn’t even so much as wave good-bye.
“The four you see here each took a different train, headed to a different destination. About the same time I started texting you, I dispatched counterintelligence units to pick them up before they got off the trains. Sadly none of these units was successful.”
“The detainees never showed up at the destinations? They left the trains en route?” Chapel asked.
“Ah. No. The units were — well. They are units no more.”
“The detainees killed your people?” Chapel asked, amazed. The DIA didn’t mess around with terrorists (assuming, of course, these were terrorists, he reminded himself). If they sent squads of soldiers to pick up the detainees, they would have gone in heavily armed and ready for anything.
“The detainees are dangerous people,” Hollingshead said. “They’re stronger and faster than—”
“Need to know,” Banks said, nearly jumping out of his chair.
Damn it, Chapel thought. He had a bad feeling about where this was going. They were going to ask him to lead an investigation to track these men down, but they weren’t going to give him enough information to do it properly. Government bureaucracy at its very worst, and he was the one who would have to take the fall.
He said nothing, of course. These men were his superiors. He didn’t have to like Banks or approve of the man’s obsessive need for secrecy — but he did have to treat him with respect. That was part of what being a soldier meant.
“We have to find these men, and soon,” Hollingshead said. He switched off the flatscreen. “You see, they are carrying—”
“Need to know!” Banks said, nearly shouting.
Hollingshead stared at his opposite number. He didn’t turn red in the face or bare his teeth or ball his fists. It was clear to Chapel, though, who had been trained to read people, that Hollingshead was about to blow his top.
“I appreciate the sensitivity of this situation,” Hollingshead said. Chapel could tell he was picking his words carefully. “But you’re putting my man in danger by keeping him in the dark like this.”
“You know what’s at stake,” Banks said.
“And I’m telling you,” Hollingshead replied, “that if you don’t clear this particular piece of information right now, I’m pulling out of this operation.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Banks said, with a snort. “You know this needs to get done. You know what we stand to lose.”
“Indeed. Oh, yes, indeed I do. Which is why, after ejecting you and your agent from my office, I’ll take this right to the Joint Chiefs. And write it up for the president’s daily briefing, where I’ll suggest that we mobilize every soldier we can get our hands on until this is taken care of. Of course, the press will want to know why we’re doing that.”
Banks looked like he’d been hit in the face with a shovel.
“This is bigger than you or me or our little fiefdoms,” Hollingshead went on. “It should be handled out in the open, frankly. I’m of half a mind to do this even if you relent. But I’ll give you one chance to reconsider.”
Banks set his mouth in a hard line. He grasped the arms of his chair hard enough that the leather creaked. Chapel expected him to jump up and walk out of the room. But he didn’t.
“They’re carrying a virus,” Banks said, finally. “A human-engineered virus.”
THE PENTAGON: APRIL 12, T+5:31
Chapel had no idea what to do with that news.
It made him want to take a shower. It made him want to shower in bleach.
He couldn’t help but ask the first question that came to his mind, whether or not he was a good soldier. “A virus… are we talking Ebola or the common cold, here?”
“Neither, and that’s the one bit of luck we’ve had,” Hollingshead told him. “It’s bloodborne, not airborne. They can only infect others by direct contact, and then only if they break the skin.”
“That sounds manageable. What’s the chance of them bleeding on someone? It’s got to be pretty slim,” Chapel said. His relief made his heart skip a beat.
Then he saw the look on Hollingshead’s face — and the identical expression on Banks’s features.
“Why is nobody agreeing with me?” Chapel asked.
“I mentioned the detainees were violent,” Hollingshead said. “I was understating the case, honestly. They’re…” He glanced at Banks and then at Laughing Boy, who was still standing by the door. “Mentally deranged is the nicest term I can think of. I can assure you, the chances of them breaking someone’s skin — or, to be frank about it, biting them — is quite high. In fact it seems to be their chief joy in life.”
“All right — that’s enough,” Banks said. He went over to the bar and poured himself a highball. “That is the absolute limit of need to know. Tell him what he has to do, Rupert, so he can actually get to it.”
Hollingshead took off his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. “Easy enough to say, of course. Much easier than it will be to do. But we need you, Captain Chapel, to go into the field and recover these men.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Chapel said, standing up. “You want me to lead an investigation to locate them, so we can send in appropriate squads to pick them up. I’ll need to rendezvous with local police and National Guard units in New York State to—”
“No.” Hollingshead held up his glasses so he could look through them, presumably so he could find any remaining smudges. Or maybe so he just didn’t have to look Chapel in the eye. “No. Nothing that simple. We’re asking you to go into the field and deal with these men personally.”
“You mean I’m to track them down… on my own,” Chapel said, because he was certain that was what Hollingshead had just said. Even if it made no sense whatsoever. “Four men who each took out — single-handedly — a rapid response team.”
“We’re saying that we need you to find them and remove them from play,” Hollingshead said.
“Remove them from play?”
“If you get a clear shot on them,” Banks confirmed, “you take it. Bringing them in alive is not required. They’re much more valuable to us dead than they are on the loose.”