Lock left Ty and Hizzard to lay down cover and readied himself to make the dash. Like stepping off a high board, he knew not to dwell on it. The secret, like most things in life, was to put one foot in front of the other. In this case, as quickly as possible.
Go. He took off towards the entrance, aware only of his own breathing and his feet jolting against the ground. The M-16 he held in both hands. He waited to hear covering fire from Hizzard and Ty but none came.
He made it to the door, stopped to suck air into his lungs in three big draughts, knelt down and levelled the M-16, sighting to a point in the middle of the nearest building. He signalled for the other two to make their dash.
Watching Ty run over was worse than doing it himself. He kept waiting for the fizz of tracers or crack of a single shot. None came.
Ty and Hizzard bumped fists, Death at their heels making for instant esprit de corps.
Inside, all was quiet. A sporadic trail of blood splashes marked the path to the ops room. Lock and Ty followed it all the way, leaving Hizzard to secure the entrance.
The control room was reinforced glass on three sides. Mareta barely acknowledged them as they approached. Lock could also see Richard. Josh was cradled in his arms, asleep.
He had a clear shot at Mareta. He doubted the first round would penetrate, but a second might, or a third. But she remained unperturbed. Then she got to her feet. Ty lowered his gun. As she turned to face them, Lock saw why. Around her chest was a hastily assembled explosives belt. Strips of C4 with what looked like nails all wrapped in gaffer tape and web-linked at one-inch intervals, a detonator clipped at waist level.
Lock had seen suicide belts before, but this one differed from the common-or-garden variety in one chilling respect. Explosive, especially something like C4, was hard to come by, and was therefore used as sparingly as possible. What did the damage was the packing material buffered around the charges — ball bearings, nails, screws, bolts. What made this device different was the amount of explosive. Easily four or five pounds. Mareta wouldn’t just explode, she’d evaporate into a fine mist. And so, most likely, would everyone else in the room.
Seventy
Frisk stood fifty yards back from the perimeter of the compound and watched as, on the other side of the wall, dark shapes flitted between the buildings. He looked around at the groups of law enforcement clustered in small huddles. FBI. ATF. SWAT. They were all here, and they all had a different plan as to how to proceed. Although the Joint Terrorism Task Force of which he was a part had been designed to establish clear chain of command, old habits were dying hard.
Frisk glanced up to see a lone figure stepping into a patch of light thrown by floodlights erected by the SWAT team at the main gate. The figure held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. He strained his eyes to get a better look.
The figure was soon close enough for Frisk to identify him. ‘Son of a bitch.’ He should have guessed.
A couple of SWAT officers in bio-suits dashed towards Ty, ballistic shields held up in front of them, handguns wedged around the sides. ‘Get down on the ground!’ one of them shouted.
Ty waved them away. ‘Listen, I wasn’t exposed. But I need to speak to someone, like right now.’
‘Get down on the ground now or you will be shot!’ the SWAT officer warned, gesturing with his gun.
Frisk watched as Ty assumed the position, and cuffs were snapped around his wrist. They shuffled him back to the perimeter. Men and women who’d spent a lifetime facing down the worst the human race had to offer backed away.
Frisk followed as Ty was led to a white Winnebago. Three steps and he was inside. It was kitted out as a mobile lab. Two more people in bio-suits greeted him.
‘I told you, I’m clear.’
‘We need to make sure.’
Ty offered his arm. ‘How long will this take?’
‘Thirty minutes.’
One of the bio-suits took a blood sample. ‘This will tell us if you have one of the ten main viral haemorrhagic diseases.’
‘And what if I do?’
‘You’ll be quarantined and treated.’
‘You can treat this stuff?’
‘Most of it. Apart from the Ebola variant. We don’t have a vaccine for that yet.’
Ten minutes later, Frisk stepped into the trailer, also in a bio-suit.
Ty greeted him with a nod of the head. ‘Pretty fly for a white guy,’ he said, ‘although you might want to think about getting the pants taken up an inch or two.’
‘Might have known you and Lock would be in the middle of this. What the hell’s going on in there?’
‘Short version or long version?’
‘Short.’
Ty told him. With each new piece of information, Frisk grew paler. All he’d known was that a major firefight had broken out at a Level 4 Bio Facility.
‘So why’d they send you out?’ he asked Ty.
‘Messenger boy.’
‘And what’s the message? What do they want?’
‘A signed undertaking from the President guaranteeing their status as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, along with an undertaking that they won’t be deported. Oh yeah, and a signed picture of Will Smith.’
‘That all, huh?’ Frisk asked.
‘The last part’s negotiable. I think they’d settle for Eddie Murphy at a pinch.’
‘Nice to see you find this all so amusing, but I’m about six levels down from being able to start offering signed executive undertakings.’
‘Then you’d better start moving it up the chain.’
‘Even if we get agreement, they’ll all be going to jail for the rest of their natural lives.’
‘They know that.’
‘OK, I’ll pass it on,’ said Frisk, stepping back out of the Winnebago. ‘But that’s it, right? There’s nothing else.’
‘That’s it.’
Ty watched Frisk exit the trailer. He uncrossed his fingers and let out a sigh. Mareta had had one other demand but Lock had told him not to mention it, although Ty hadn’t needed telling. Soon as he had the all clear, Ty was going to take care of it himself. In fact, he was looking forward to it.
Seventy-one
Ty found Carrie among the lines of news trucks which had been pushed to the very edge of a service road. The good news was he was clear of any infection. The bad news was that he was going to have to convince her to assist in something that could see them both spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
As soon as she spotted him, she rushed over. ‘Where’s Ryan? What’s going on in there?’
‘You’re slipping, girl. Aren’t you supposed to reverse the order of those questions? With you being a member of the press ’n’ all.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘He’s inside. I wouldn’t say he’s safe exactly, but he’s in fair shape considering.’
‘Considering what?’
Ty pulled her to the rear of the truck. ‘He needs our help.’
Carrie took a breath and centred herself. ‘OK. What kind of help?’
Ty had already decided to feed it to her piece by piece. ‘You have a car here?’
‘No.’
He produced a set of keys. ‘Damn, have to use Lock’s then.’
‘Ty, what’s going on?’
‘Where’s the dumb dog he left you with?’
‘In the truck, asleep.’
‘We’ll need to take her with us.’
‘Where? Where are we going?’ She glanced back at the news truck. ‘I’m on duty here. I can’t just pick up and leave.’
‘Ryan needs you to do this.’
‘You still haven’t told me what it is he wants me to do. And I’m not going anywhere until you do.’
Ty rested his hand against the spare tyre on the back of the news station’s RV. ‘Second thoughts, we can use this too. Kill two birds with one stone. You can get your story while I make my pick-up.’