“We’ll talk about that when this is over.”
“Hey,” Harper said. “You two can play later.”
Nate and Vince got out the keys and removed the cuffs. Then they went to the back of the room where the heavy duty chemical suits were hung.
Harper got one down, and then Kate and Tam did the same, but they didn’t put them on. Not yet. They took them to the main section of the clean room, and Nate walked over to the front console. There, he found what he was looking for—the controls for all the entrances and exits. He nodded at Vince, who went back into the bomb storage area. Three minutes later, Vince was back. “It’s all clear. Now.”
Nate pressed the button that turned off the biometric scanner. He locked the outside door, and even the ventilation shaft. The only thing he didn’t lock was the elevator. No one was getting in or out without his say so.
He checked with Tam. “You okay?”
“I’ve got it,” she said, as she held up the small camera. It was a beauty, the size of a paperback book, but it could broadcast a pristine picture with its miniature wireless transmitter. “Give me a test.”
She held the camera steady as she aimed it out the window into the bomb room. Nate got on the walkie-talkie. “Christie? You getting this?”
“I am.”
“Get on the horn with Eli. Make sure he’s seeing it, too.”
While he waited for Christie to come back, he helped Harper set up the microphone. Vince went to the bomb room again and did a sound check. All the meters looked operational, and then Christie came back with the all clear. The mission was a go.
Nate waved Vince in, and the two of them raced to the elevator. It was hell going up, counting the seconds, wondering if they’d find Boone and Seth alive, but they were ready when the door opened. With two single shots from two separate rifles the guards were down, and Nate and Vince were racing down the hall, throwing open doors that led to plush offices. Finally, they hit pay dirt and went in like a tornado.
There were five men aside from Ingram in the room. One goon was standing over Seth, fist raised for a blow that would knock down an elephant. He was the first man Nate shot.
Vince didn’t lag behind this time. He took out two of the guards. Nate had to smash one in the face with the butt of his rifle as he came from behind, then shoot the one pointing his automatic between his eyes. When he turned around, Ingram also had a gun in his hand, pointing it at Nate’s chest. Vince clocked him in the back of the head.
He went down with a satisfying thud. Nate and Vince untied their men. They looked like shit, with bruises and cuts all over their faces. Seth’s right eye was swollen shut.
“Jesus,” Nate said. “Tell Harper to look for a first aid kit. A big one.”
“Hell, I had worse at boot camp,” Seth said, wiping the blood from his split lip.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Boone said, bending to lift Ingram.
“Hold on, soldier.” He handed Boone his walkie-talkie. “Tell my sister you’re okay and that you love her.”
He broke out in a grin and clicked the button. “Christie? Honey?”
All they heard from the other end was crying. It was a really good sound.
“I’ll see you in a little while,” he said. “You just watch those monitors. And don’t be afraid if you hear the sirens.”
He signed off then gave the walkie-talkie back to Nate, who pressed the button again, this time asking for Tam.
“I’m here.”
“We’ve got them. Hit the alarm.”
A second later Klaxons went off from every speaker in the plant, and Nate could just picture the panic it was creating. Whoever was left in the area wouldn’t be there for long. Including the helicopter on the roof.
He and Vince got Ingram to his feet. They cuffed his hands behind his back and half walked, half dragged the dazed man to the elevator.
By the time he’d recovered his senses, he was tied to a chair in a room filled with bombs. Harper, wearing her chemical suit stood in front of him. She’d put the canister of gas at his feet.
Inside the control room, the camera rolled and the microphone picked up every syllable of Leland Ingram begging for mercy.
IN THE NEWSROOM AT THE Los Angeles Times, Eli Lieberman was trying his best not to have a heart attack. He had two of the fastest fax machines known to man running constantly to his right, a computer and DVR system complete with tech guys on his left and the freaking editor-in-chief was standing over his shoulder trying to tell everyone what they were doing wrong.
Half the faxes were going out to every news outlet in the country. They were receiving his and Corky Baker’s background story, plus the complete breakdown of the money trail that led from Kosovo to Omicron to a bank account in the Cayman Islands and ended at the feet of Senator Jackson Raines.
The other fax machine was spitting out technical data to the Centers for Disease Control, the National Health Institute and every other chemical and pharmaceutical research facility in seven countries. They were getting the chemical composition of the antidote, as well as the background on the gas. The call was out to the finest scientific minds in the world to find a dispersal system for the antidote, to make sure no one on the planet ever died again from Omicron’s gas.
And that was only the beginning.
“Hey there, Leland. You don’t know me personally, but you tried to have me killed, so I feel I can call you Leland. I’m that pesky doctor who witnessed that mass murder you bastards committed. But since you were so far away from the experience, we thought you might like to get a much better feel for what went down in Serbia. And in Chad.”
She leaned closer to him. “Don’t worry, Leland. You won’t have to wait long to feel the effects. First, your pupils will constrict, so you might experience some visual difficulty. Then you’ll get a headache and you’ll feel a terrible pressure in your sinus cavities. Your nose will run and you’ll probably drool. And that’s all within the first minute.”
She wished she could take off the chemical helmet because it made her voice sound funny and it wasn’t easy to breathe, but that would ruin the effect. “Next,” she said, “comes the tightness in the chest. You might think you’re having a heart attack, which I suppose you are, at least to some degree. You’ll vomit. A lot. Which won’t seem half as bad as what comes next. I’m afraid it gets even messier. You’ll urinate. And you’ll defecate. Probably at the same time, and all within the second minute.”
He was weeping now, and he wasn’t even waiting for the gas to have a runny nose. “Please. Don’t. I beg you.” His voice wobbled and broke. It was so pathetic she wanted to laugh in his face.
She crouched down by the canister instead. “The one thing I’m pretty sure of is that the last part, the part before you die? That hurts like a son of a bitch. When I was in Serbia, in that village you wiped out, I looked at the children’s faces. They died in excruciating pain, you evil prick. Even the people inside the houses, who didn’t have the direct exposure to their skin, died horrifying deaths.”
“It wasn’t me. I swear to God, I was just following orders. I didn’t know.”
She put her hand on top of the canister, painted to look exactly like all the others in the bomb room.
“Wait.”
It wasn’t Ingram, it was Nate, right on cue. He was also in chem gear, and he no longer had his rifle.
“Why?” she asked.
“Give him a chance.”
She stood. “Why should I? He didn’t give any of those children a chance.”
“I want to hear what he has to say.” Nate turned to Ingram, still quivering and staring at the casing. “If it wasn’t you in charge, who was?”
“Raines. Senator Raines. He’s the man behind it all. I was just working for him.”
Nate smiled behind his mask. One down, one to go. “Why did Raines have you use a Delta Force unit to wipe out all the scientists?”
“You were the best,” he said. “And loyal. He didn’t think you’d question your orders.”
“But, Leland, weren’t you going to kill us anyway?”
“He was!” Leland was almost insane with fear now.
“Tell me the plan, Leland.” Nate kept his voice steady and calm. He didn’t want Ingram passing out.
“Raines needed money. Millions. He needed to seed the campaigns of the congressional races where those sharing his vision were running for election. He wants control, and he wants to be president. But he couldn’t get the amounts of money he needed by donations alone.” Leland looked up briefly, but he couldn’t stand it. He had to stare at the canister. “He figured he’d kill two birds with one stone. He never believed the U.S. should have signed the chemical weapons disarmament treaty. So he sent the scientists to Kosovo.”
“And now he’s used the gas twice, right? Once in Serbia and once in Chad?”
“Just take that thing out of here, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“That you will, Leland.”
“SENATOR RAINES.”
He looked up from his desk at the intrusion. It was Mark, his aide, and Mark wasn’t the type to come barging into his office. The kid looked panicked, and Raines put his pen down. “What’s happened?”
“Sir, you’d better turn on the news.”
Raines picked up his remote and turned on one of the three televisions he had installed in the wall across from him. The first thing he saw was a picture of Leland Ingram. Raines felt his blood run cold as he made out where Ingram was. And that he was tied up next to a canister of the gas.
Below the picture, there was type scrolling, and he immediately saw his own name inch by.
With shaking fingers, he turned on the other two televisions, and the picture was all the same. Live. From Nevada. From the manufacturing plant that wasn’t supposed to be on U.S. military property. Each one showed with shocking clarity the rows of bombs that weren’t supposed to exist, containing a deadly chemical weapon that was banned by international treaty.
“Get the helicopter ready,” he said.
“Yes, sir. But, sir?”
“What?”
“There are reporters outside. Lots.”
Senator Raines leaned back in his chair. Even if he did leave, they’d find him. He’d be branded as a traitor, and his people, his loyal cohorts that had followed him from his humble beginnings as the mayor of Los Angeles, they would all scurry and hide. They’d name names and they’d turn on him so quickly they would leave skid marks. It was human nature.
He had no regrets about what he’d done. Only that he hadn’t killed those damned Delta Force soldiers.
“Forget the ’copter, Mark,” he said. “I’ll be out to see the press in a moment.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Mark had closed the door, the senator opened his top drawer and reached in the back. The first pistol he’d ever bought felt good in his hand. It should. He polished it regularly and took it to the firing range more often than any of his other weapons.
He turned back to the TV set and watched Leland Ingram try to talk his way out of his imminent death. For a moment, Raines thought about waiting, watching Leland die. But in the end, he just wanted it over with.
TAM COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. She wanted a television so she could be sure, absolutely sure that what she was recording was really going on the air, and that there wasn’t some horrible mix-up.
Boone’s walkie-talkie crackled. It was Christie. Tam couldn’t hear what she said, but Boone was grinning like a fool when he signed off. “The good guys are on their way. Eli called Christie. There’s a boatload of law enforcement coming in from Vegas, along with a Hazardous Materials team. They’re closing this place down, and taking that asshole in.” He nodded toward Ingram who had no hesitation whatsoever in selling out every person he’d ever met.
Tam wished she could drop the camera right this second and get on the phone with her parents. Assuming…
No, she wouldn’t go there. This was a wonderful day, the best she’d had in years. The nightmare that had become her life was over. She could go home.
The only cloud was that meant leaving Nate. She didn’t want to do that. She cared about him deeply. In fact, she was pretty sure she loved him.
But it was the pretty sure that told her she had to go.
Even in that horrible chemical suit, Nate looked like a leader. The way he stood over Ingram. His commanding voice, even through the distortion of the helmet.
She wondered what it would be like to wake up knowing Nate wasn’t in the next room, or on an errand. She couldn’t imagine it.
It was too hard thinking of the bad part, so she thought about the good. By this time, scientists and chemists all over the world would be reading her papers. They’d understand exactly what it had taken to create the antidote. Of course, they’d also know that she’d failed with the disbursement system, but those close to her field would realize how limited her resources had been.
She was still concerned about the reaction to her decision to go to Kosovo in the first place. Why hadn’t she insisted they tell her what the work was for? Why hadn’t she made it a point to talk to the other chemists?
She’d live with her guilt and regrets for the rest of her life. She promised herself that whatever work she did in the future, she would do her damnedest to make up for it, and make damn sure her work was for good ends, and the good of humanity.
“WE KNOW YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT in the Cayman Islands, Leland. Do you think it’s right that Senator Raines should get away with all that money? Don’t you think the families of those you killed deserve reparation?”
“Yes, yes. Please, God, I have to go to the bathroom. Let me go and I’ll tell you the account number.”
“Not gonna happen. Tell us the account number now, and then we’ll untie you.”
Ingram was sweating so profusely he looked as if he’d just stepped out of the shower, his pale hair plastered to his forehead, his shirt dripping. Nate wanted him to suffer more, much more. He wanted him to die by his own gas, but there was still enough of a soldier left in him that he couldn’t do it, even though he knew he could make it look like a mistake.
“I can’t. I can’t tell you.”
“You have the antidote?” he asked Harper.
She nodded and went to the door of the safe room where Boone handed the syringe to her. It was very large—a horse syringe, actually. Bought on one of Vince’s scouting missions. And it was filled with nothing more than discolored water.
She came back in front of Leland and gave him a real good view. “I have to administer this within the first minute of exposure,” she said. “In order for it to be effective, I’m going to have to inject you directly in the heart.”
She put the syringe down and took off her thick gloves. She reached over the canister and ripped Leland’s shirt open, the buttons clinking on the floor.
He gasped as if he’d been stuck through with a blade. As they watched, the crotch of his very expensive pants darkened.
Nate knew this would humiliate him, pissing himself on national television. It was a small thing, and petty, but he enjoyed the hell out of it.
“Well, I guess you won’t have to worry about urinating when the gas hits,” Harper said. “Or going to the bathroom.”
He was sobbing now. No words, just body shaking, wrenching sobs. His pale skin quivered and his nose ran.
“Tell me the bank. The account number. And the balance,” Nate said.
He wailed, but he didn’t talk.
Nate nodded at Harper. She put her gloves back on and checked for exposure. Then she looked up at Nate. “You’d better clear out. I only have the one dose of antidote.”
He nodded, hoping this would be the last of it. He went for the door as Harper put her hand down on the top of the canister.
“Wait! Jesus God, don’t do it. I’ll tell you, I swear.”
Nate stopped. “Right now, Leland.”
He gave them the information they wanted, but hesitated again when it got to the bank balance.
Nate started to leave again, and that was all it took.
“Two point eight billion.”
“Did you say billion?”
“Yes. Billion.”
“Holy crap.” Nate shook his head, then headed inside the clean room, Ingram’s screams begging him to stop.
He took off his helmet and looked at his team. No one was celebrating just yet. Boone and Seth were at the ready, despite the fact that Seth could hardly see. Tam stood by the window, aiming the camera with steady hands, and Kate was monitoring the meters, making sure nothing got cut off, or went screwy.
Vince, on the other hand, was sitting with his feet up on the console wearing a large smile as he watched the show. The only thing missing was his tub of popcorn.
“The cavalry is coming,” Boone said. “Hazmat, the FBI. It’s gonna be a regular dog and pony show.”
“Look,” Nate said, “we know they’re going to want to take us back to Washington, but it’s gonna take awhile for them to get their act together. What say we get the hell out of here while we can? We’ve got everything we needed on tape. Eli’s handling the press. We’ll let them know where we are when we’re ready.”
“Where do you want to go?” Harper asked.
“I don’t know.” Nate grinned. “But I’m thinking a cold beer might be real nice.”
“I know where we can find exactly that,” Boone said. “But maybe we should get Seth patched up before we celebrate. Oh, and we need to spring Milo, too.”
“Seth?” Nate asked. “You need a hospital?”
“Hell no. I need a drink.”
“Then it’s a done deal.”
He turned around and Harper was waiting for the signal. She nodded, then held up the syringe once more. “Leland, this is from all of us. Nate Pratchett, Christie Pratchett, Seth Turner, formerly known as Jeff Harris. Kate Rydell, also known as Kathryn Ashman. Vince Yarrow. Dr. Tamara Chen. The late Cade Huston, who his parents know as Charles Dugan, and me, Harper Douglas, who was licensed as Dr. Karen Clements. We’re all looking forward to watching you go straight to hell.”
She unscrewed the top of the container, and immediately vapor started rising from the can.
Leland screamed quite loudly. Of course he had no idea it was dry ice in the canister, not his precious gas. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did have a heart attack, but that wasn’t her problem. She hated this bastard and his suffering would never begin to make up for what he’d done.