He was now in the kitchen and thinking about getting his second cup of coffee of the morning, but only after checking the inventory list. There was a clipboard hanging on the wall, near the light switches, and he pulled it off. He walked to the walk-in freezer, and started checking off the number of boxes of frozen French Fries, fish sticks, juice drinks, and—
Something smelled odd. Odd indeed.
Eddie pushed a box out of the way, to get a better look, and—
Shit.
His very first thought was that he hoped he hadn’t screwed up a crime scene, for he had no doubt that this was a crime scene. The dead man — Darren, that had been in his name — had been murdered and stuffed in here. Now Eddie felt angry that someone here with a security clearance and working for the Feds had committed murder, for no one else could have gotten access here.
He stepped back out of the freezer, gently closed the door, and made a phone call.
More than eight hours would pass before he got that second cup of coffee.
Monty Zane stepped out into the Operations Center of AirBox as a uniformed security officer came up to him, looking serious and holding a clipboard, though the poor fellow couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen.
‘Sir, you don’t belong here. You need to have a—’
Monty held out his ID card. He said, ‘Pal, some heavy kind of shit is going down around here, and it’s all coming this way. I certainly need to belong here, and I need to see your boss. Your boss of bosses, that is. General Bocks.’
The young man handed back the card, seemed to swallow hard. ‘Yeah, there is some heavy shit going on around here. Come on, I’ll see what I can do.’
Bocks was in a small conference room off the main floor of the Operations Center as Randy Tuthill came in. Randy said, ‘We’re seriously fucked, aren’t we?’
‘That we are.’
Randy said, ‘There’s a hazmat crew up top, at maintenance hangar two. They’re working on one of our MD-11s. They took out the canisters that we installed and—’
Bocks said, ‘I know. They don’t contain anthrax vaccine. They contain anthrax itself. A vicious airborne strain. Supplied by that CIA woman, Adrianna Scott. Like you said, we’ve been seriously fucked over.’
Randy stumbled a bit as he spoke. ‘What… what… how are we going to…’
‘That’s why I need you here, Randy. We’ve got to figure out a way of disarming those canisters, or immobilizing them, or doing something so our aircraft can land. We’ve got to… Randy, why in hell are you shaking your head?’
Randy’s face was the color of snow. ‘General, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left the maintenance hangar. We can’t get to those canisters. We simply can’t. And the moment those jets go below three thousand feet… sir, what are we going to do?’
Bocks couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Adrianna Scott checked her watch, saw that it was now four a.m. She clicked on the car’s radio, found an FM station that carried a CNN radio news feed at the top of the hour, and caught the latest newscast. The woman announcer’s voice was shaky and listening to the news made Adrianna smile.
From the car’s speakers, she heard, ‘CNN has learned that the Department of Homeland Security will shortly increase the threat level color to red — meaning that a terrorist attack is either underway or imminent. CNN has also learned that… that evacuation procedures for the President, Vice-President and Congressional leaders are also taking place at this moment. Military threat levels have also been raised at American military installations here and overseas. CNN has not received any official notification of these events. Stay tuned to CNN radio news for the latest—’
Adrianna shut the radio off with just a tinge of regret. Somehow word had gotten out, and it was too late to care about it. All she was sure of was that a number of AirBox jets were in the air. One would have been a success — tens of thousands of deaths from one just aircraft. Everything else was just, as was said, gravy.
She continued driving, a smile sometimes playing across her face.
Randy Tuthill hated the look on the General’s face, knew his boss was looking to him for some sort of answer, some sort of miracle. But he couldn’t provide one. There was a knock at the door, and then a large black man with a scarred face was there.
‘General Bocks?’
‘Yes?’ he said, looking up from the conference-room table.
‘The name is Montgomery Zane. I’m the military representative for the FOIL team that’s been working with you, the one that—’
Tuthill watched in amazement as his boss lost it. Bocks stood up, the tendons in his neck standing out in whiplike fury as he said, ‘I guess the fuck you are! I guess the fuck you are the ones working with us, the ones who’ve used us and fucked us over! Tiger fucking Team Seven! Where in hell is your boss, Adrianna Scott?’
The black guy seemed to be a cool customer, for he didn’t flinch one bit as that acid stream poured out in his direction. Zane said to the General, ‘I don’t know where Adrianna is. I’ve been trying to contact her for nearly a day. No answer.’
Papers in the General’s hands were being shredded. ‘Sure. Why not? Do you have any fucking idea what in hell you people have done? Do you? Do you?’
Zane, his voice low and even, said, ‘No, I don’t.’
Bocks tossed the papers at him. ‘And I don’t have time to tell you shit, pal. I don’t. So why don’t you get the fuck out of my building before I have your ass in jail and—’
Another voice from another man, entering the office. ‘General, if you’d like, I’ll tell him. If you’d let me.’
Randy didn’t know who the tired-looking guy with a torn and dirty shirt and jacket was, but Bocks seemed to recognize him. But even the flash of recognition didn’t seem to turn down the anger.
‘And why the fuck should I do that?’ Bocks demanded.
‘Because,’ the other guy said, ‘I know more than anybody else here does, and we don’t have much time.’
Brian Doyle looked at Zane, the General, and the other guy, who seemed to be working with the General. His chest still hurt like hell and he was bleeding some from where he had torn out the IV from his arm. The General said, ‘Yeah? And what the hell do you know that’s so important?’
Brian said, ‘Those canisters in your jets, they don’t contain a vaccine.’
‘Already knew that, pal. They contain anthrax.’
Zane swore once, very loud. Brian said, ‘Far as I know, it was Adrianna’s play, start to finish, though she certainly had help. Somebody to create the vaccine, somebody to deliver it and—’
Bocks raised his hand, dismissing him. ‘Sorry, pal, you’re batting oh-for-two and I don’t got time to fuck around. Homeland Security’s on it. Your bitch boss was working with a virologist from the Soviet Union, and some al-Qaeda punk who knows how to drive trucks. They made the delivery a few days ago. Truck and license plate matched what was sent to us, their identification was all in order, and—’
‘Iraqi,’ Brian said.
‘What?’ Zane said. The General stayed quiet.
‘Her real name isn’t Adrianna Scott. It’s Aliyah Fulenz, or something like that. She’s an Iraqi Christian woman. She made sure to tell me that. And everything tonight…it’s revenge for what was done to her parents. I’d guess they died during the first Iraq war.’
Zane started asking him questions but Bocks was louder, saying, ‘And why should we believe that story, detective? Why’s that?’