“I’m here.” The voice was surprisingly clear considering the fact that it had to travel from a cell phone no bigger than a pack of playing cards to a drone twenty-seven miles above the earth before being rebroadcast back to Langley. “How do you read me?”
“You’re comin’ in slurred and stupid, as usual, beb,” Thibodaux laughed, breathing an audible sigh of relief to hear his friend’s voice.
“Glad to hear it,” Quinn came back. “Listen, has the boss gotten hold of that plague doctor yet?”
“She’s sittin’ right beside me,” Thibodaux said.
Megan leaned toward the phone out of habit, as if closing the gap another few inches might make it a little easier for her voice to travel thousands of miles. “Megan Mahoney with the CDC.”
“I’m looking at some pretty bad stuff here, Doctor.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Roger that,” the voice said. “I’ve got what looks like two airtight rooms behind glass observation windows. The rooms are divided down the middle… That wall looks to be airtight as well, but I can’t be sure from where I’m at. They’re set up like hospital wards but—” Quinn’s voice stopped abruptly.
Mahoney opened her mouth to say something, but the big Cajun held up his hand to shush her.
“He could be handling… a problem,” Thibodaux whispered. “He stops talking, we stop talking.
There was a muffled pop on the line that reminded Megan of a large metal pan being dropped to the ground. Garbled voices followed, and then two more pops in quick succession.
Quinn came back on the line, calm as if he’d just gone to answer the door. “Had a couple of visitors,” he said simply. “I could sure use your help, Jacques. They keep popping up every time I try to get the job done.”
“I wish I was there, l’ami,” Thibodaux said. “I hate sittin’ on my thumbs stateside while you get to play World of Warcraft with the bad guys.”
“Dr. Mahoney.” Quinn’s voice was somber again. “I’m thinking this is some kind of a test facility where they could watch their experiments with the disease progress. No one has tended to the people in these rooms for quite a while. It looks like a horror movie in there. The sheets are filthy… blood everywhere.”
“How many?” Mahoney heard herself ask. She had seen Ebola wards firsthand in Africa and could imagine what the rooms looked like.
“Five,” Quinn said. “It’s hard to say, but I’m pretty sure three are Americans… some of our missing soldiers. I think one of them is dead already…” The unmistakable sound of a sniff came across the line. “There’s a little girl in there… maybe seven years old. She’s still moving, but I think the woman next to her is dead… Anything I can do to help her, Doc? Could I put on a mask or something and go in there?”
There was an earnest goodness in the voice that stopped Mahoney’s heart in her chest. To be sent on this sort of mission, he had to be a capable and dangerous man. She hadn’t expected any semblance of mercy.
She looked helplessly at Thibodaux.
“He’s got a little daughter of his own,” the Cajun whispered. “He’d never say it, but it kills him to be away from her.”
Mahoney nodded, understanding. Her jaw set in a firm line. “Listen to me,” she said. “This is going to be hard…” Her voice caught as she imagined this man, this father, standing on one side of a filthy glass window, separating him by mere inches from a child in unimaginable agony. She took a deliberate breath and plowed ahead, staring at the floor, unable to look Thibodaux in the eye. “It’s a horrible thing… but you’ve got to leave her in there. From what we know so far, these poor souls are infected with a highly contagious, airborne variant of a hemorrhagic virus. If it were to get out, thousands… hundreds of thousands would die. You must not go anywhere near them, mask or no mask.”
Mahoney’s eyes welled with tears. She hated to cry in front of people, fearing they might see it as a sign of weakness. A look at both Thibodaux and Guttman’s glistening eyes showed her she had nothing to worry about in that regard. That didn’t make what she had to do any easier. Though a death sentence had been pronounced on the victims in the lab long before her conversation with Jericho Quinn, she was the one pushing for a fast execution. She tried to console herself with the tired rationale that such an end would be more humane, but the grim truth was that such humanity didn’t matter. The virus could not be allowed to escape the confines of that lab.
“Your only option is to destroy that place.” She shivered as she said the words. “Believe me, it’s the kindest thing you could do for the child.”
“I hear you, Doctor.” Quinn’s voice came across the speaker again, full of composure now. “Jacques, get Palmer on the line. Let him know I’ve got three photographs for him. I’ll send them your way as soon as I get to a pickup point.”
“Roger that,” Thibodaux said, raising a dark eyebrow. “Photographs?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Head shots, like these guys make when they prepare their last will and testament… right before they strap on a vest full of nails and explosives — martyr portraits. There were five of them, but I’ve taken care of two of the problems since I came to the lab…”
“You have names?” Thibodaux asked
“Afraid not,” Quinn said. “Just photos. But I also have a small case, about the size of a box of rifle ammo. Looks like it’s supposed to hold twenty glass vials about two inches long each. There are only seventeen left in the case and they’re all empty. Don’t know about the other three…”
Guttmann’s mouth fell open. “You think the three people in your martyr photos are bringing that virus to the U.S. in those vials?”
Mahoney ignored the young sergeant. “Can you give me a better description of the vials?” she said.
“Glass… maybe a hard plastic… clear… about the size of a tube of lipstick. Each vial has an inner glass container, slightly smaller, that fits inside the larger. Both have screw-on tops with rubber seals.”
“You could get a hell of a lot of virus in a vial that size,” Thibodaux mused. “Couldn’t you, Doc?”
Mahoney nodded slowly, making some notes as she spoke. “Depending on the culture medium you’d need to keep it viable, enough to infect thousands — maybe more.”
“That settles it,” Thibodaux said, smacking his huge hand on the table. “Jericho, get the hell out of there and let us blow that place to kingdom come.”
Guttmann stepped in front of his control panel, guarding it. “I can’t… I mean… I couldn’t fire the Tomahawks without permission,” he stammered. “I’d need authorization for that from way higher up than you. This is only supposed to be a surveillance op…”
“He’s right,” Quinn said. “A missile would destroy the place but start a war with the Saudis at the same time. If we destroy the evidence they’ll have a hard time buying off on our claims of a deadly virus. Besides, I still haven’t found Farooq. Give me an hour. That’ll give you time to get your permission. In the meantime, I have an idea that might solve our problem. If you don’t hear from me in an hour and five minutes, bring your little buddy out of orbit and zap us to Hell.”
“Okay, l’ami,” Thibodaux sighed. “An hour and five it is, but be sure to give yourself plenty of time to scoot out of there. I’m afraid Mrs. Miyagi will take away my new toys if you get yourself killed. I’m getting’ sorta attached to that Beemer.” His words were frivolous, but his face was creased in worry. He leaned forward against the counter, resting his face in his big hands. “No shit, Jericho. Be careful.”
“I’ll talk to you again in an hour.”
“Roger that,” Thibodaux said, straightening up with a groan. “I’ll call Palmer.”