Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (10 page)

After Ben had jumped her battery,
she’d had to drive way up north to the rendezvous point to deliver the vaccines
to George and Lydia. With Ben’s warning in her ears, she hadn’t stopped to get
a bite or even use the restroom for fear the Civic wouldn’t start again if she
did. By the time she reached the old union hall, she was exhausted, hungry, and
sore from sitting hunched over the wheel.

She didn’t recognize any of the
cars in the crowded parking lot, but she was tired, and it was dark, so she
just slung her purse over her shoulder, hauled the larger bag from the trunk of
her car, and headed across the uneven lot for the side door to the basement,
hoping George and Lydia would be there as promised.

When she walked through the door,
she nearly fell over. Not only were George and Lydia there, but there must have
been somewhere between thirty and forty other people milling around in the
brightly lit room. Her heart started to race, and she felt the heat rise on her
face.

Who were all these people? What
had she just walked into? She gripped the straps of both bags, hugging them
tight to her body, and stood in the doorway wavering.

She swayed from side to side and
tried to decide whether to plunge into the crowd or back her way out the door.

George and Lydia pushed through
the sea of milling bodies and appeared at her elbow.

“What is this?” Celia asked. Her
voice shook.

George smiled and patted her arm.

“A good thing. We told Captain
Bricker about your success in acquiring the vaccines. He’s privy to some news
that led him to move up the timetable on the inoculations. That’s why all the
bigwigs are here,” he said, easing the strap of the larger bag off her
shoulder.

His explanation cleared up
exactly nothing. She’d always been a bit player in the organization—a dabbler,
really. Not because she wasn’t interested, because she was, but because she
lacked any special skill or background that would enable her to take a
leadership role. George was former military. Lydia, his girlfriend and
second-in-command, was a nurse. Celia was just a nobody who wanted to learn how
to take care of herself.

So when George had asked her to
stay behind to talk after their November troop meeting, she’d been more than
surprised—she’d been shocked that her troop leader was interested in talking to
her personally. Flustered, but excited at the prospect of
doing
something, she’d agreed to apply for the job at the distribution center and
acquire the vaccines.

Throughout the mission, George
and Lydia had always been careful to say ‘acquire’ or ‘obtain,’ never ‘steal.’
And, although Celia knew darned well that what she’d done was stealing, she’d
adopted their usage, too. Still, she hadn’t felt overly bad about her actions,
because George and Lydia had repeatedly told her how important it was to the
organization that they get the vaccines.

Now, looking out at the room full
of troop leaders that were here because of her, and what she’d done, she didn’t
feel bad at all. She felt puffed up with pride.

“
He’s
here,” Lydia
whispered in a conspiratorial, awed voice.

“Who?” Celia asked.

“Captain Bricker.”

A jolt of excitement coursed
through Celia’s body, and she felt her eyes go wide. Captain Jeffrey Bricker
was the head of Preppers PA, but in the nearly eighteen months that she’d been
a member, Celia’d never shared the same air as him. She’d seen videotaped talks
that he posted on the members portal of the website, and she’d read his weekly
newsletter, but she’d never personally met him. Judging by the shimmer in Lydia’s
eyes, she wasn’t the only one.

“He’s here? Really?” Celia asked.

“Really. And he wants to meet
you,” George said. He laughed at her star-struck expression and steered her
down the two steps that led to the floor and through the crowd.

They approached a tall, handsome
older man. Even from behind, Celia recognized his close-cropped blond hair shot
through with silver and broad shoulders from the videotaped speeches he’d
posted on the website.

George tapped the captain on the
arm, and he turned toward them. In person, his bright blue eyes were even more
arresting.

“Sir, this is Celia Gerig,”
George said, gesturing toward her.

As the captain searched her face,
Celia felt her cheeks flush.

“Celia, your mission is going to
save untold lives. To say thank you seems entirely inadequate, but you have my
personal thanks,” he finally said, taking her hand and shaking it in the
two-handed manner of a politician.

Celia stammered, “You’re welcome.”

He swept his gaze wider to
include George and Lydia. “All three of you are to be commended for your
service. We’ll be moving into the next phase this weekend. As a show of my
gratitude, I’ve decided you may each designate one civilian to bring to the
camp with you if you choose. Do you have any non-preppers you’d like to save?”

George and Lydia were holding
hands. They looked at each other and then shook their heads no in unison.

“Save?” Celia managed to squeak.

Captain Bricker nodded gravely. “Our
intel is solid. The virus is on its way. The American way of life as you know
it is about to end.”

Celia’s stomach lurched, and her
mind spun. Finally, she said, “My mother. Please.”

He nodded again and patted her
shoulder. “Of course. Tomorrow we’ll be running vaccination clinics, but you
can get her on Sunday and bring her to the compound. I expect anyone who wishes
to save themselves will be convening at the compound by Monday at the latest. Now,
if you’ll excuse me, I need to explain the plan to our gathered brethren.”

She nodded, mute and grateful,
and stepped back to stand beside George and Lydia, who released each other’s
hands and straightened to attention.

Captain Bricker called for
silence, and the din of laughter and conversation ceased immediately. It was as
if someone had pressed a mute button. Forty-odd faces turned toward the leader,
expectant and eager.

With a solemn expression, he
delivered the news, “Friends, thank you for gathering on such short notice. As
some of you know, two weeks ago some disconcerting news came to my attention.
Without going into details, I became convinced that the pandemic was imminent,
and the government is ill-prepared to deal with it.”

He paused and allowed a muted
murmur to make its way around the room. To Celia, it sounded disapproving, but
unsurprised. As if those assembled already knew this information.

“Now,” he said, “let me forestall
the obvious questions. Hasn’t the government contracted with a pharmaceutical
company to stockpile an effective vaccine? Doesn’t that mean we’ll all be safe?
The answers are that they have, indeed, and it means the exact opposite.”

He squared his shoulders and
jutted his chin forward and thundered, “Our government, ladies and gentlemen
has bought all the available doses of the vaccine. All of them. That means when
the day comes—and it’s coming soon—that the first American citizen is stricken
with a flu unlike anything we’ve ever seen, you won’t be able to protect
yourself. Stay inside and wash your hands, that’ll be the government’s advice
to you.”

“That’s right!” a voice from the
crowd shouted.

Several people nodded. A woman
near the front raised her fist and shook it.

Celia felt the outrage rising.
The room grew close, hot.

“What else can they do? They don’t
have enough for everyone. So, they’ll decide whether they deem you worthy of
protection or whether you’ll be left to suffer and die. Do you trust them to
make the right choices?” Captain Bricker asked the crowd.

“Noooo!”

The call and response reminded
Celia of church. To her left, Lydia was bouncing on the balls of her feet,
raring to go.

“No, indeed. Which is why I’m
pleased to tell you that George Rollins, with the assistance of two members of
the D Unit, has secured us our own supply of the vaccine,” Captain Bricker
said.

He spread his arms wide and
raised his palms toward the roof. The room reacted with hoots and applause.
George, red-faced and awkward, shuffled his feet and waved. Lydia ducked her
head. And Celia felt frozen in place as all eyes turned her way.

He continued, “So this evening,
each of us will be vaccinated, and Nurse Markham will train us in administering
the vaccine. Then, you need to return to your communities and reach out to your
troops. Anyone who intends to weather the pandemic with us at the camp needs to
be vaccinated, make final arrangements, and be ready to bug out ASAP. The
vaccine takes seventy-two hours to reach full effectiveness, so you will each
leave here tonight with a supply of doses sufficient to vaccinate your troop.”

He paused and surveyed the room. “This
is it, people.”

His excitement bubbled to the
surface for a moment, but he tamped it down so quickly Celia thought she
imagined it.

Lydia organized them into teams
and presented a crash course in how to give vaccines. She demonstrated on George,
who, in turn, gave Celia her shot. Celia vaccinated Captain Bricker with
shaking hands, and he vaccinated the next person in line. On and on it went,
one leader vaccinating the next. More than an hour passed in a blurred of
alcohol swabs and syringes.

It was nearly midnight when they
finished, and when Celia trudged out to the icy parking lot, she wasn’t
surprised to find that her car battery had died again.

After a failed attempt to jump
the car, Lydia grudgingly offered Celia her guest room.

Now, Celia shifted in the bed and
winced. The injection site where George had administered her vaccine was sore.
She gently rubbed the spot, then she rolled onto her side and out of the bed,
with its stiff plaid comforter and matching bed skirt.

She moaned as her feet hit the
floor. Her entire body ached. Lydia must have opted for the cheapest mattress
available for her spare bedroom, she thought as she shuffled to the door and
out to the kitchen.

The ranch house was quiet, but
Lydia had left a note propped up against a still-warm coffee pot. She plucked
it from the counter.

Celia,
Make yourself at home. George will drop off your car with a new battery this
afternoon. When my shift’s over, we’ll do a shot clinic for the unit.
Lydia

Celia yawned. She really needed
to perk up. She poured a cup of coffee and helped herself to a muffin from the
tray next to the coffee maker.

She carried her breakfast into
the living room and lowered herself onto the couch. She picked at the muffin
with her fingers and considered calling her mom. She knew she should prepare
her, warn her for what was about to happen, and give her time to pack and close
up the house. But she was so tired. She’d just rest a while and call her later.

She placed the mug on a coaster
and sat the muffin beside it. Her eyes were closed before her head hit the
couch’s backrest.

She was still asleep when Lydia
returned home four hours later.

Leo sat at Naya’s
desk, staring at the phone in his hands, swallowing the acid that rose in his
throat, and focusing on not vomiting. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting
there like that, but he felt like he would never move. Judging by the growing
darkness, the sun had set some time ago. Still, he sat.

Then Sasha banged through the
door, no doubt ready to bring him up to date on her search for Celia Gerig.

He swung his head around to face
her.

“I just talked to Gavin—” she
started, then stopped abruptly. “What’s wrong?”

He imagined he looked the way he
felt: Scared. It wasn’t an emotion he had a lot of experience with, but fear
had seized him in a physical way. He was cold. Frozen.

He looked up at Sasha and forced
the words out. “It’s worse than we thought. It’s really, really bad.”

She came to him immediately and
placed a warm hand on his rigid arm. “Talk to me, Leo.”

Sasha had just called him
Leo
.
He must look bad. Even in the throes of pleasure, the woman called him
Connelly.

He swallowed. “I just got off the
phone with a friend who’s assigned to Shield America.”

She gave him a blank look.

“It’s one of the ICE projects.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement runs all the Homeland Security
investigations, right?” he said, ignoring the quaver in his own voice.

“Sure.” She nodded, encouraging
him to go on.

“So, there’s a bunch of task
forces—drug trafficking, human smuggling, transnational gangs, money
laundering. Shield America is part of the strategy to stop
counter-proliferation. Basically, its charge is to prevent the export of
components of weapons to our state enemies.”

“Okay.”

“Equipment that could be used to
assemble weapons of mass destruction or agents that could be used to make
biological or chemical weapons, in theory, would be stopped by Customs
officials before ever making it to the Middle East or Asia, or wherever.”

Leo could tell he was
over-explaining, trying to put off the inevitable delivery of the news he’d
learned.

Sasha nodded again.

“They focus on the export side.
And, while there are lots of tasks forces that would work to prevent the import
of those materials, there’s no one project dedicated to it. I guess that’s why
France called Shield America.”

“France called?”

Leo dropped his phone on the desk
and took both of Sasha’s hands in his. The contact slowed his heart rate. He
allowed himself a moment to just connect with her warm skin before he answered.

“Yes, the French government
wanted to alert Homeland Security about a situation, and they had a working
relationship with Shield America.”