Tanner ran to the opposite side and held out a hand to Liam, who had guided his waverunner to the side of the vessel. Liam jumped and Tanner pulled him aboard. The two operatives crouched low on deck, scanning their new surroundings. The forward structure had no rear-facing windows. Tanner held two fingers together on his right hand and pointed to the structure. He and Liam ran to the rear wall, glad for the cover it gave them from nearby boats. They had no way of knowing if Hofstad had other craft in place in the harbor.
Tanner controlled the river of adrenaline surging through his body. Behind the wall he leaned on were terrorists controlling drones about to spray the POTUS with a deadly neuro-agent. At least he and Liam both carried small arms. He pulled his Kahr PM9 from the hip holster concealed beneath his I HEART SEAFOOD T-shirt and checked the action. Liam readied his Smith & Wesson 686 .357 revolver. Tanner made a box-like motion with one finger from each hand, indicating that they should split up and move around the structure, meeting in front by the only door they’d seen.
The two OUTCAST operatives converged on the front end of the structure, one on either side of a door with two high windows set into it. They each gave the other a hand signal to indicate things were clear on their respective sides of the enclosure. Looking across the expanse of water toward President Carmichael’s yacht, Tanner saw the squadron of micro-drones perhaps halfway to it. They had to act before the pleasure boat was blanketed in deadly mist.
Liam put the hand not holding his gun on the rusty piece of metal bolted to the door. Tanner nodded, his own weapon at the ready.
Liam pulled the door open.
FORTY-SEVEN
The mood in Jasmijn’s laboratory was beyond grim, but the three OUTCAST operators had a mission to carry out. An alarm sounded, indicating that the STX samples had spent enough time in the chiller machine and could now be removed.
“That’s it,” Stephen said, carefully opening the chiller and removing the rack of test tubes. It was unnerving, working with the body of Dr. Rotmensen lying nearby on the lab floor, even draped in white lab coats. But there was nothing that could be done for her now, and OUTCAST knew that if they were to report the death, the lab would be overrun by crime scene investigators and they wouldn’t be able to complete the antidote preparation for which Jasmijn had given her life.
“What’s the next step?” Dante asked. Naomi picked up the written procedure Jasmijn had dictated to Stephen just before she died.
“Testing! Prep the STX syringe — be careful! I’ll get a rat.” Naomi went to the rat cage and withdrew one of the specimens while Dante — his movements slow and deliberate — filled a syringe with the last of the STX liquid samples.
“I’ll hold it.” Stephen took the rat from Naomi and cupped it in his meaty hand. “Let’s wait a few seconds to make sure it’s not moving.” The very last thing he wanted was a repeat of Jasmijn’s accident. Dante walked up to him with the loaded hypodermic. After the rat was still for several more seconds, Stephen nodded. Ready.
Dante brought the tip of the needle to the rat’s abdomen as he had seen Jasmijn do. He injected the animal. It squirmed but Stephen’s grip remained firm while Dante withdrew the hypodermic without incident. Naomi called out the time, as the procedure indicated, while Dante disposed of the needle in the labeled biohazard container. Naomi took the injected rat and placed it in the solitary cage, where it was expected to die within the next few minutes unless the antidote worked.
Naomi read from the procedure. “Prep the antidote syringe.”
Dante selected one of the freshly prepared tubes of antidote solution and carefully drew it into a hypodermic. He walked over to the rat cage and stood watching the animal scuttling around, pausing occasionally to sniff the floor. He was joined shortly by Naomi and Stephen. A couple of minutes later this rat, like the one before it, began to stumble and shake. They waited another minute to make sure that the neurotoxin had taken a firm hold. It was not easy to watch the rat struggling in the grips of the STX, knowing that Jasmijn had just endured the same fate. Nay wiped a tear from her cheek as she watched the rodent battle to remain upright.
“Inject him,” she said, eyes on the written procedure. They repeated the injection process with Stephen holding the specimen and Dante administering the shot. This time the rat did not squirm. When the antidote had been administered, Naomi noted the time and Stephen put the rat back in the quarantine cage. A couple of minutes passed where the rat did not appear to improve; it barely moved at all, simply lying on its side on the floor.
“C’mon, little guy!” Naomi urged. If this antidote was not effective, then it meant that Jasmijn was wrong about what had kept the antidote from working, her last effort in life unsuccessful.
“She was under an unthinkable amount of stress,” Stephen said, watching the rat quivering on the floor of its cage. No one had a response. They just stared at the specimen.
“Five minutes,” Naomi intoned, looking up at the lab clock.
And then the rat righted itself. Its muscles stopped spasming. The three operators held their collective breath as the specimen began to walk once more around its cage, its movements no longer tentative. Its gait was steady, deliberate. Normal.
“It’s working!” Dante exclaimed, a smile appearing on his face for this first time since they’d entered the lab. They continued to monitor the rat for fifteen more minutes. After that time it was still acting normally.
Stephen addressed Naomi and Dante.” Pack the remaining samples for travel. I’ll put a call in to Danielle and update her on the status. We’re taking this antidote to Maine.”
FORTY-EIGHT
The barge wheelhouse was unnervingly small. There were no labyrinthine passageways or stairwells leading up and down — nothing like that. Just a single wall partitioning the space into two distinct areas. The forward area, in which Tanner and Liam now found themselves, housed the barge’s steering controls and navigation equipment. A simple wooden door, slightly ajar, divided the two spaces.
They weren’t yet sure what the second area contained, because to get to it they would first have to defeat the man standing at the helm of the barge, eyes open in surprise at the sudden entrance of the two spooks.
Liam knew he had to take the opponent down before he could scream and alert his associates in the other room. The former SEAL was already crouched low, his eyes at knee level with the barge driver. Not wanting to use his gun, which was not sound suppressed to avoid raising suspicions during travel, he reached up and grabbed the hand of the terrorist, yanking him down, hard. At the same time he lashed out and jammed a foot down on the Hofstad man’s shoe, preventing him from backing away while he was pulled to the deck.
The foe managed to get off a garbled yelp before Liam slammed his forehead into the deck, knocking him out instantly. The impact was so brutal he wondered if the sound of his head hitting the deck might be heard in the next room, and he and Tanner braced themselves for a shootout.
But no one came, and they could hear normal conversational voices carrying on from beyond the partition. Tanner searched the unconscious man and relieved him of his weapons — a Sig Sauer pistol and a folding knife. Liam took point and crouched at the inner door. Tanner positioned himself behind and to the right, weapon drawn.