…which had been immediately followed by the news that a Kite vaccine was imminent and, oh yeah, heeeeere’s Norm.
Genius.
He’d hand it to the general, it’d been a masterful plan. Certainly had taken the wind out of their sails.
That was fine. Jerald was nothing if not a flexible man. He’d accept the three steps back and work at grooming someone else to be the church’s figurehead and then take it farther than Hannibal ever could have before.
But the last thing he’d do was let Hannibal burn it all to the ground.
It was bad enough he’d lost contact with the stronghold in southern California two days ago. The manager there had locked down the complex two weeks earlier, but it looked like, somehow, the Kite virus had gotten inside. The most likely probability was someone in security sneaking in family members, or had been bribed a lot of money by someone inside to let people in.
When last Jerald had heard from the manager of the stronghold, they’d already quietly po-cloed twenty-two people who’d either tested blue, who had been in close proximity to those people, or who showed Kite-like symptoms.
Five of those people had shown symptoms but not tested blue, which was a disturbing development he’d heard about but hadn’t seen.
Until now.
Now the compound wasn’t responding to phone calls or to e-mails. And when he tried to remotely pull up security camera feeds, he got nothing but static, meaning their self-contained electric grid had gone completely off-line. There were forty-two hundred people in there when the manager ordered the gates and entrances sealed. Not even at full capacity, but with Kite on the rampage, Jerald had told him to lock it up and hunker down. It was supposed to be accessible only by air, by the helipad on the roof, once they were locked down. With a full capacity, they could have survived over two years without opening the gates.
Under capacity, they could survive a lot longer than that if they rationed their food properly.
Jerald wasn’t about to break that news to Hannibal yet, that one of the strongholds was likely gone. That would, no doubt, send the man over the edge.
It would also potentially cause a panic within the other strongholds. They’d billed the strongholds as foolproof and safe, able to sustain them for years while the outside world burned itself down with Kite.
If it was shown that they couldn’t keep their promise to protect the people in the strongholds, their “whales” might decide to put their money to better use arranging their own safe hideaways.
Jerald knew this might come down to him having to drug Hannibal himself, use some of the same medications Hannibal had stockpiled there for Mary, to keep the man compliant.
He didn’t want to resort to that unless he had to.
Didn’t mean the option wasn’t on the list.
I’ve got to find that damn woman, and soon. Before Hannibal completely loses his shit.
Chapter Eight
Juju and Delta took Ax to the shooting range Monday once the scientists were safely inside the CDC lab and under the protection of Uncle and Chief and the SOTIF13 team.
They were working with Ax with a nine millimeter, an easy gun to teach him how to use, and one that everyone in the unit carried. They couldn’t exactly work with him on one of the carbines they also had without raising a few eyebrows.
Fortunately, in Georgia gun ranges were about as common as pawn shops in some areas. And the fake IDs they were using easily passed muster with the shop owners.
Delta had questioned putting a weapon in the man’s hand at first. When it became obvious Ax was definitely working with them, Delta had grudgingly admitted it was a good idea. They could never have too many armed and trained people on their side. Not that they intended to put Ax in a position of having to fight, but one never knew.
LA had been proof of that. Shit going down fast, without time to prepare. In that case a massive earthquake jolting them out of their safe house before they were ready to move.
Delta wished they’d been able to protect Scooter’s friends. It sucked that two civvies died because of what Silo’s hired mercs had done to them trying to find Scooter. She hadn’t even been the right target. Ax had been the one they’d wanted, even though the mercs didn’t know it at the time.
Lima passed it around that Bubba had taken care of the hacker who’d sent the mercs in the first place. And had gleaned more information from him in the process. Silo was still clueless that they had full access to the church’s computer network and that Pandora and Scooter were busy running down money trails and gradually cutting them all off.
That was all above Delta’s pay grade, as far as he was concerned. Give him a mission, give him orders, point him in the right direction, boom.
Hence why their unit—all the SOTIF units—were made up of such a diverse population of skill sets. They needed to be the Swiss Army Knife of special ops units, able to go anywhere, do anything, get shit done.
After Ax emptied several mags of rounds into a paper target, Delta ran it back to them to get a better look.
“You’re still grouping low and to the right,” Juju pointed out. “Better than you were, though. I think you’re still tensing up too much.”
“Does this ever get easier?” Ax asked.
“Yeah,” Delta said. “Especially if you want to stay alive with us.”
Ax turned to Delta. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Kill someone. How do you make yourself pull the trigger?”
He scratched at his chin. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days and stubble rasped against his fingers. “I guess when the choice is between living and dying, there isn’t really a choice. I want to live.”
“What if they’re not armed?”
Juju arched an eyebrow. “We’re not just talking self-defense, are we?”
Ax shook his head.
“I know you’re looking to get a chance to blow Silo’s brains out yourself,” Juju said, “but remember there’s a long line ahead of you. It doesn’t matter who actually takes him out. You’re part of the effort to take him out. Nothing’s going to happen that will unnecessarily put any member of this unit at risk, military or civvie. We won’t let that happen. It might be Annie and her sniper rifle from a safe distance. It might be another SOTIF team altogether that Gen. Arliss is already putting into place. We don’t know. But justice will be served.”
Ax started reloading the mag by hand. “Not soon enough for me,” he muttered. “And too late for Scooter’s friends. They died because of me.”
Delta reached out and put a hand on the guy’s shoulder, waiting for him to look at him. The hacker was thirty-two, only four years older than him and Juju, but he damn sure looked older than that.
“I can’t say I know what you’ve gone through. That’d be bullshit and you and I both know it. But you’re part of the team now. The small-picture and the big-picture. That means you have to work with us.”
“I plan on working with you. I am working with you. I just…” He seemed lost in thought for a moment. “I guess even though I’ve planned for this all my life, I never thought I’d be this close. I thought I was doing something by taking potshots at his church through a blog, but it was like shooting spitballs at a damn tank, and deep inside I knew it was bullshit. Know what I mean?”
Delta and Juju both nodded, not interrupting him. Delta suspected the guy needed to vent.
“I was conning myself into believing that I would get even, when the truth was my brothers and I could barely afford our apartment. I was working my ass off. And…nothing. Then that day Mary Silo e-mailed me, it was like one of those stupid movie scenes where a bright light shines down on you from…well, from heaven.”
Ax shoved another round into the mag. “I didn’t even believe it was legit, at first. Until all the shit broke in the news about her disappearing. I still thought, even then, that maybe I was being played. Then I actually saw the videos and listened to the audio she grabbed.”
/>
He paused for another moment. “I thought I was pissed off at Silo. I thought I had a reason to rage about this shit. I realized not only did she have it a lot worse off, but she was in terrible danger. She wasn’t my mom, but maybe I could help save her. And it just…it made me sick watching those videos. I didn’t want to put them online at first, not really. She asked me to. Wanted me to. Said she was tired of hiding the truth and knew he couldn’t hurt her anymore in the ways he could before.”
Ax met his gaze again. “Do you know all this started because she laughed at him when he asked her out on a date in college? Then he had a friend spike her drink at a frat party, had her gang-banged, filmed it, and then threatened to show her parents. She was young and scared and went along with what he told her to do out of fear he’d ruin her. Well, he ruined her anyway.”
Ax finished loading the mag and slammed it into the gun. Delta ran the target back down while Ax released the gun’s slide and then cocked the weapon, checking the safety. “Now I want to ruin him.”
The next grouping of shots was tighter, and a little higher and to the left, approximately in the center of the target’s torso.
“That’s better,” Juju said.
“I need more than better,” Ax said as he reloaded. “I need to be good.”
* * * *
When they returned from the gun range, Ax took his laptop and headed into one of the vacant offices he was using as a temporary office and closed the door behind him.
Juju looked at Delta and cocked his head toward the back, where they heard people talking and working.
They found Omega in there with Echo and Zed, working on walling off another section of the warehouse space for the lab.
“What’s up, gentlemen?” Omega asked.
“Can we take a quick walk?” Juju asked. “All of us.”
The other men exchanged a glance and immediately followed Juju and Delta outside.
“What’s up?” Omega asked.
“Ax,” they both said. Juju took over and related their gun range conversation.
Omega slowly shook his head. “You think he’s a loose cannon?”
“No,” Juju said. “Not yet. I don’t think he’s going to do anything to jeopardize the mission because if anything he knows we’re the best bet he’s got at getting Hannibal Silo.”
“I’m just worried about what this is doing to him,” Delta added. “He’s dealing with a ton of emotional shit.”
“Think we should move him to Florida?” Omega asked.
“No, not yet,” Juju said. “I agree he needs to be close to Mary Silo. If she’s here in Atlanta, we need him here to help bring her in.”
“So this is merely an FYI?” Omega asked.
“Yeah,” the men said in unison. Juju took over again. “A heads-up. Don’t know if anyone can or should try to talk to him about it, but it needs to be put out there.”
“Does he realize it might not even be us who takes Silo out?”
“We told him that. But I’m not sure how well that’s sinking in.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
They all returned to the warmth of the building. A series of arctic winter storm fronts was sweeping south through the country, all thanks to last year’s shart of mass destruction from China nuking North Korea.
It was their turn to handle preparing chow that night. He and Delta fixed a quick pot of spaghetti and a large salad. Juju didn’t mind working with the guy. In a pinch, the two of them went from being unable to come to an agreement to almost being spookily tuned into the same brain wavelength, moving and acting as one.
It made any aggravation their personality differences caused well worth it. Especially when that spooky attunement had saved both their asses many times.
Didn’t hurt that when they had a woman in bed between them they seemed to be in sync there, too. Shortly after being paired together and completing the unit’s first mission, they’d had an overnight pass. The two of them had met a woman at a bar, went home with her, and the next morning realized that whatever irritations they caused for each other were nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“Just out of curiosity,” Juju started, “why you gotta bust my chops sometimes? Like the pizza thing.”
Delta grinned. “I’d worry more the day I stop trying to get under your skin, brother.” He smacked Juju on the shoulder before heading out to call the others for chow.
Juju stared after him.
I will never get the hang of dealing with him.
Chapter Nine
Bubba leaned back in his wheelchair and stretched his arms over his head, wincing at every pop and creak in his spine. He was finally feeling a little better after the Halloween night “chat” with one of Rev. Silo’s hackers.
Fortunately, Bubba’s two retired military intel friends had been more than happy to handle the wet-work and clean up for him.
Just when he’d honestly been ready to give up on life, when he’d thought he was too old for this shit, a shining opportunity to save the world—again—had dropped into his lap and put him front and center stage in the middle of an apocalypse.
Everyone thought he was a mild-mannered, wheelchair-bound head researcher working for CMM in Chicago.
No one at work knew about his more than twenty years spent in military intel, some of that serving under now-General Joseph Arliss.
But he wasn’t much cut out for field work anymore, unfortunately.
Pulling up news websites out of Houston, Bubba had been searching for clues as to what was going on there.
Before long, he found it.
Picking up a burner cell, he called Gen. Arliss at his office.
“Yeah?”
“Houston.”
“What about it?”
“I’m seeing a disturbing trend. Coupled with some intel I received first-hand, it needs to be addressed.”
“I’m listening. Go.”
Bubba pointed out some “heroin-beta” overdose deaths, which they all knew was a crock of shit.
That was the code name for Kite the drug, a way to keep the public from stampeding in terror.
“Let me make calls. I’ll call you back.” Like that, Arliss was gone.
Bubba was waiting when Arliss called him back fifteen minutes later. “Well, there’s one more guy I have to kill,” Arliss said. “Shit. Suggestions?”
That the general relied on Bubba didn’t faze him in the least. He’d worked with the man long enough to know the general would make his own decisions, but he didn’t want to be brown-nosed or bullshitted in the process.
“SOTIF1,” Bubba said. “Extreme prejudice.”
“Why them?”
“Because if there are any other secret surprises waiting in whatever lab they have there, that whole team has been inoculated with a test vaccine already. It might protect them more. And while we’re pretty sure the other food chains are now secure, my gut says SOTIF1. But I want to send in a solo operative first to scope out the situation.”
“Who?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“No.”
“Better off you don’t know. There’s no chance of it leaking out, and he’s someone I trust and can vouch for.”
“Good point. Forward everything to Lima and coordinate with Papa when you want them sent in. I’ll take it from this end.”
When Bubba ended the conversation he smiled. It felt good to know he might not be in the field, but he could command by proxy one of the most powerful special ops teams on the planet. Then he set about making arrangements.
Six hours later, a buzzer alerted him to someone on his floor. He’d moved from his apartment to a safe house in another apartment building a few months earlier after taking out a paid merc Silo had sent to kill him.
He was ready when the knock came. Two rapid ones, followed by three more.
A glance through the viewfinder and yes, it was Kant.
Bubba unlocked the door with one hand, backing up, waiting to
holster his gun until Kant was safely inside and had locked the door behind him.
“Any problems getting here?”
“No one on my six,” Kant assured him. A carryon bag was slung over his shoulder.
Bubba rolled over to his desk, picked up the ID packet, and handed it to him. “All the deaths are tied to the fact that they were frequent patients of the Houston VA pain clinic. I think someone’s recruiting them there, a few at a time.”
“Pos?”
“No. They were all clear, but that doesn’t mean anything now. Some of the newer strains are mutating too fast to keep up with the stick tests. Meanwhile, the signs point to the drug Kite, not the virus. I hope.”
Kant looked through the paperwork. “The hospitals there know what this shit is, right? Why didn’t they report it?”
“Yeah. Here’s the thing—they did report it, to a contact in the Washington, DC office. Funny, that data didn’t get passed down to Atlanta.”
Kant arched an eyebrow. “Well, now. That is a mite suspicious, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. That’s what Arliss thought, too.” Bubba glanced at his watch. “I’m guessing there’s a new vacancy in the DC CDC office right about now.” He smiled. “You interested?”
Kant snorted. “I’m a field medic, not a doctor.”
“At this point, Arliss doesn’t care, as long as he can trust them. Atlanta is where the action is.”
“Let me get through this mission first,” he said. “Am I making contact with anyone?”
“I don’t know yet. Notify me when you’re on the ground and I’ll update you. Under no circumstances are you to put yourself in jeopardy. That shit is lethal. Help identify the agents and the facility and get the fuck out. SOTIF1 will do the heavy lifting. I need you back here in one piece.” He didn’t have many friends he could trust with this level of involvement. Men he’d served with.
Men who’d risked their lives to save his life.
Men who’d die for each other.
Just because they were old dogs didn’t mean they all didn’t have a few tricks left in them.