She told him, her voice clipped and urgent, cramming a tremendous amount of information into a very small timeframe.
“It’s a virus? Liz, I’m not a virologist. You know that. My work was on immunological reactions to Bubonic plague.”
“Yes! That’s why I thought of you. We incorporated part of Yersinia’s DNA into the virus! It helped with immunosuppression.”
Hingemann’s bushy eyebrows raised. “What part did you incorporate into the DNA? Is it possible you incorporated… are some of Yersinia’s antigens incorporated into the viral capsule?”
“Maybe,” Liz said. “Maybe.” She felt a tickle behind her nose and said, “Excuse me,” the sneeze building up quickly. She quickly plucked a Kleenex from the night table and sneezed into it. She took the tissue away to see it was filled with spatters of blood and mucous. She felt liquid begin to run from her note and pressed the Kleenex to her face. It was soaked with blood.
“Liz!” Hingemann said, voice alarmed. “Liz, are you all right?”
Liz felt the world spinning around her, eyes filling with tears. The subject monkeys’ first clear symptom of infection had been bloody noses.
“Liz! Talk to me! Are you all right? What’s going on?”
Liz didn’t hear him. She was thinking, It’s starting too fast. I should have had two to four more hours before the internal bleeding began. Oh God, oh god, ohgodohgod…
35
After what seemed like an endless march through the dark, Derek stumbled out of the trees and onto a grassy berm leading down to a road. He was nowhere near the parking lot with its burning helicopter and cars and dead bodies. He wasn’t sure where he was. He suspected that he had been marched east, away from the parking lot, but he had become totally disoriented in the darkness, his body aching, his wounded leg screaming with every step, staggering over tree roots and rocks and uneven patches of ground.
Two vans were parked by the side of the road. The passenger side door of the front van opened and a tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped out wearing camouflage fatigues. Derek nodded to himself. Richard Coffee. Older, bearded, his face more lined, his hair more gray. Coffee strode toward him until he was arm’s length away.
“Derek! Good to see you!”
Pure hatred exploded in Derek’s chest. Without warning he launched himself at Coffee. Coffee easily knocked him aside. Staggering, one of his guardians slammed the butt of his rifle into the back of Derek’s skull. Derek fell to the ground, fireworks exploding in his head. He tried to pull air into his lungs, but couldn’t.
“Well, enough of that,” Coffee said. “Bind his hands. Damn, Derek. Why can’t you just play nice?”
“Fuck you.”
A booted foot lifted him off the ground. Derek curled into a protective ball, wretching and gasping for breath. Coffee said, “Enough, already. I need to talk to him later. Don’t I, Derek?”
Coffee crouched down so he was on Derek’s level. Derek looked up at him, feeling ill, wanting to kill the man who had once been his friend. Coffee said, “Or maybe we can talk right now? I really only have one question for you. Where’s Irina Khournikova?”
Oh shit, Derek thought through his fog of pain. From bad to worse. “Who?” he croaked out.
Coffee backhanded him. Derek collapsed into a pile on the grass.
“Wrong answer. Get him into the van.”
The two minders pulled Derek’s arms tightly behind him and what felt like plastic flexi-cuffs snapped around his wrists. They bodily lifted him off the ground and dragged him to the front van. He fell unceremoniously onto the hard floor of the vehicle and the two men climbed in after, bracketing him. Coffee held a canvas bag in his hands. In a soft, menacing voice, he said, “Irina is very important to me, Derek. I want to know where she is. When we get you to headquarters, you’re going to tell me where she is.”
“I don’t—”
Coffee yanked the bag over Derek’s head, cutting him off.
Lying on the floor of the van, feeling the vehicle move and turn, Derek thought about Irina Khournikova. He needed to buy time. When they got to wherever headquarters was, Coffee was going to insist he tell him where she was. Were they lovers? Irina is very important to me, Derek.
He tried to focus on a story. He could not tell Coffee she was dead. He could especially not tell her he had killed her while interrogating her. Not if he wanted to live very long afterwards. Derek focused his mind and tried to think. He thought as if his life depended upon it — because it did.
It was only a short time before the van came to a stop. Derek guessed they were either still in D.C., or in one of the nearby suburbs.
Coffee said, “Get him out. Take him over to Trailer C.”
Derek was lifted roughly by his arms. Once was on his feet, the bag was ripped off his face. Blinking in the sudden illumination, Derek studied his surroundings. He stood in a large warehouse. Behind him were a series of metal doors, one of which the vans had driven through. A few dozen vehicles were parked near the doors: white vans, sport utility vehicles, a couple motorcycles, Army Humvees. It was a huge space, large enough to accommodate a dozen motor homes and trailers. A group of people moving around, loading luggage into vehicles, attending to tasks that to Derek looked like early preparation for departure. Everyone he saw was armed with handguns and assault rifles.
Something odd caught his attention. It was a large trailer in one corner. It appeared to be a double-wide. It was painted a flat putty color and there were no windows, everything having been boarded up, painted with the putty and further sealed with what looked like plastic sheeting and duct tape. From the roof of the far end of the double-wide were a number of metal tubes that extended upward and back to the rear wall of the warehouse. The tubes also appeared to be covered with putty and plastic sheeting.
A generator and fan roared next to the trailer. Next to the generator were stacked barrels of gasoline. It was the only trailer in the warehouse that had its own power supply and circulatory system.
He puzzled over what he was seeing, but only for a moment because the two guards shoved him in the back with their guns and headed him toward a different trailer. Coffee said, “I’ll be around in a few minutes.”
The two guards marched Derek across an open expanse of concrete to a motor home. One of the guards opened the door and went in, the other shoved Derek after. “Trailer C?” he asked, but was rewarded with a jab of pain in his left kidney. He climbed the two metal steps into the motor home and found himself in what must the be The Fallen Angels’ infirmary.
No thank you, he thought. It’s not time for my yearly medical checkup. Besides, I don’t think you accept my insurance.
“Sit,” one of his minders said, a muscular, steroid-juicer with a shock of white-blond hair. Derek dubbed him Sven. Sven pointed to an examining table.
Derek sat, though getting up there with his hands behind his back wasn’t the easiest thing he’d done all day.
Once on the examining table, he didn’t have long to wait. An Asian man dressed in what looked like either black scrubs or pajamas entered the motor home, Richard Coffee behind him. Derek couldn’t pinpoint the nationality. Probably not Japanese. Possibly Chinese or Philippino. Not, he didn’t think, Korean, though it was hard to tell. Something about his features suggested Chinese. Not Malaysian, Indonesian…
“Dr. Ling is going to take a look at you,” Coffee said.
“No thanks. I’m fine,” Derek said.
“You’re limping and favoring your side.”