Scott worked alongside Edie and the volunteers to help those they could. Sweat and grime covered his arms and face. The pungent odor of jet fuel and burning flesh filled his nostrils. For a time, he lost track of Edie.
In the distance, he heard sirens and something else. The familiar whop-whop-whop of a helicopter and not just any chopper, a Rescue Hawk. He glanced toward the sea and saw a pair of Rescue Hawks coming in fast.
When he looked back, Edie was there, saying, “Scott, we can’t stay. We have to go as soon as the choppers get here.” She was on her cell phone, but looking directly at him. “Our orders are to find and stop Owen Blake and Alexis Gosling.”
“Like hell we have to go,” he said. “Right now, this is where we’re needed.”
“Your crates,” she said, “several were found at the boat site, discarded and empty, but they were stamped with clear biohazard symbols.”
Scott knew the biohazard icon well. Like the nuclear hazard symbol, it was universal and easily understood. Anyone who saw it knew that what was inside a container marked with the symbol was dangerous. “Can they run tests to find out what we’re dealing with?”
“Unlikely, I’m told, unless there was a leak or a spill, but if there was…” She didn’t finish the statement. There was no need. A leak or a spill meant they’d all been exposed. She slipped her phone into a pocket, put a hand out to his chest to stop him from turning away. “We’re running out of time. Imagine this times a hundred or a thousand because that could be what’s coming if we fail.”
I need air, Scott thought. Air and answers. He didn’t understand how Angel — someone he knew and trusted — could do such a thing. There was no answer that made sense, unless she’d been forced and had no other choice.
Flames and screams pulled him like a beacon. Standing in the maelstrom, he let his instincts guide him. The chaos felt so familiar, so permanent. A wounded man was right in front of him and he went to the man, trying to pull him to safety only to take a startled step backward.
It was the co-pilot, his body ripped in two by the force of the explosion. Unable to breathe, Scott went down on his haunches. Edie was there instantly, pulling him to his feet and from the wreckage. “We’ve done all we can. We have to go,” she said, pointing skyward. “We’re running out of time.”
With the crowd and confusion, the Rescue Hawks couldn’t find landing sites, so they hovered to allow sailors and marines to repel to the ground. Edie signaled the team leader as soon as he touched down. As the soldiers began to push back the crowds to create landing zones, a woman, her hair dripping wet from the beach, came running toward Scott and Edie. “Can I help?” she said, reaching out her hand.
“Sixty-second debrief. Stay right there,” Edie said to Scott giving him a stern look that said she meant business before turning and walking swiftly away. Scott was about to direct the woman to the aid workers rushing from the helicopters when she grabbed his arm, dropped down, and pulled him over her shoulder, taking him completely by surprise as he suddenly found himself flying through the air before landing with a resounding thud.
Even before he fully righted himself, the woman was on him, knee strikes to his chest and stomach, elbow strikes to his neck and back of his head as he went back down. He swept out with his foot, catching the woman’s legs. She went down but didn’t stay down long as she expertly pushed off the ground and popped back up, elbows and knees flying as she wheeled around him.
Her moves were precise, clean and fast. Expert. Once she was behind him, she locked her arms around his neck and squeezed using her weight and knees to bend him to her will. He attempted to break the chokehold by thrusting back into her chest with his elbows. When that didn't work, he reached back with his one good hand and clawed at her face, probing for the socket of her eye. Her response to his thumb digging at her eye was to drop backward and try to bite at his ear.
Somewhere in all the confusion, he heard Edie shouting. He hit the ground back first but his attacker was no longer behind him. Instead, she was standing over him, pushing her foot into his throat while she leveled her gun at him and started to squeeze the trigger. He fought back, twisting and pushing with his one good hand to keep her from crushing his larynx.
A shot rang out and then another. A bullet struck the ground no more than an inch away. As he broke free, the woman dropped to her knees, firing a wild shot that he felt swoosh past his ribs. “Why can’t you just die?” she said, her face pale as a bright red rose blossomed on the middle of her chest. “Why?”
She fired a third shot or at least Scott thought she did, but this time he was on his feet and able to twist away. When he spun back around, the woman was tumbling to the ground with a fresh bullet hole in the space between her eyes. It was in that moment that everything slowed enough for him to recognize the woman. Knowing his attacker was Peyton Jones brought no solace, but it did seem to bring answers to his questions about Angel.
Angel had been coerced into carrying the bomb or at least it’s what he told himself, but he wouldn’t know for sure until Kathy was debriefed. Edie was right about one thing — well, many things really. The clock was counting down. They were running out of time.
Chapter 3
Aboard the USS Kearsarge, Master Chief Roberts paced back and forth in the hall outside Sit 1, a satellite phone pushed against his ear. “This whole damned thing is a cluster fuck. It’s way past time to issue civilian alerts,” he said firmly to the Commander, United States Sixth Fleet in Naples, Italy. “We tried to get out in front of this and got bit in the ass.”
Last year the chief had given up cigarettes and chewing tobacco because Meg, his beautiful wife of 26 years, told him she wanted to make sure they grew old together. The irony, he told himself, the fucking irony. None of it stopped him from wishing for a nicotine rush that would help take the edge off. It was either that or a glass of brandy. Not a shot or a tall pour, but a glass — the whole, damned glass. Maybe even the bottle.
Too many good soldiers were dying. Too fucking many.
“Chief,” the vice admiral said, “you know I have the utmost respect for your experience and opinion. You and yours have walked into the abyss for us again and again. This is no different.”
“Like hell it isn’t. They just blew up another fucking chopper and took more good soldiers with it,” the chief said, almost spitting into the phone. “Call this thing or I’ll find a way. Swear to hell, I will.”
Sometimes, like now, when things got beyond bad into downright awful, the chief wished his Sam was with him. A call to Samantha, irrespective of the fact he couldn’t share any details of an op with her, calmed and soothed him. Always.
But Sam was six months in the ground and now they’d never spend their golden years together. She’d married him, but he’d married the Navy years before. He didn’t have to serve past thirty. He could have retired, having given more than most. Thirty years was a lifetime. “The last reenlistment,” he’d promised, “the last tour overseas and I’ll be home. Promise.”
“Bill,” the vice admiral said, “It’s been decided. Out of my hands. Any alerts would only cause widespread civilian panic. Can you imagine all those people trying to get out of one airport? Gridlock and pandemonium would only be the beginning. We’d lose control of everything. Do what you and yours do best and get them. Get them for us, for yours and ours. Get them before they can do their worst.”