Spooky slipped out of the truck to work his way around the parking lot, low to the ground. In the fading light he might as well have been invisible. Daniel pulled his trucker’s cap low over his eyes and headed for the back door to the hall.
Inside, the sounds of music, the beeps of game machines, and the murmur of conversation surrounded him. He smelled cigarettes and beer and wine and harder stuff, as the barmaids poured drinks for the members from their own marked bottles. That was how they avoided controls and taxation – brought in your own bottle then paid the organization to mix and serve your drinks. Club rules.
Daniel stood at the inside end of the short hallway opening into the main room. It was Friday night, and the bingo was just setting up. There were a few card games going on the side, and a short line of eager players in front of the registration table. His dad stood in it.
Daniel swallowed a lump. It was good to see him. It had been too long.
He intercepted the older man as soon as he had gotten his bingo cards, steering him toward the hallway leading back out the rear door. “Hey, what?” David said, jerking away before Daniel lifted his hat to show his face. He put a finger to his lips before his father could cry out.
Daniel whispered in his ear, “Great to see you, Dad, but we got a situation. You’re being watched, because they want to find me. You got to didi-mao with me now. Give me your cell phone.”
The elder Markis stared at his son a moment, wheels turning behind his eyes, then reached into a pocket and handed him the phone. Daniel pulled him into the men’s room, dropping the phone into the tank of one of the old toilets. He mimed getting undressed, opening up the paper bag he carried and taking out a set of cheap sweats and a pair of sneakers. His dad changed silently, eyes questioning. Daniel shrugged, held his fingers up to his lips, then his ear. His father nodded.
Daniel picked up his father’s wallet, ran a bug-finder over it with negative results, then put it in his pocket. Everything else of his dad’s except his handgun and ammo went into a plastic bag. They slipped out the back, and tossed the bag into a pickup truck bed chosen at random. Follow that, Jenkins.
They got into their own pickup truck and pulled out the sun screens, pushing them behind the seats. “Damn, son, you’re makin’ me miss bingo, and I’m supposed to meet a nice young lady here. What –” He broke off as Spooky appeared at the passenger door, climbing in silently. His dad moved over on the bench seat to the middle. Daniel drove casually out of the parking lot, just another patron of the VFW leaving early.
“All clear, Spooky?”
“Two more infected, Chairman DJ. And out for a while.”
“Excellent. Dad…this is a long story, but we have a few hours on the road. Just listen for a while, okay? It’s freaky.”
They told him everything, start to finish, sparing no detail. It took some time.
David J. Markis was nothing if not a quick study, whip-smart in a way that Daniel wasn’t, he’d be the first to admit. The elder Markis ate it up. His first words were, “All right. Give it to me.”
“What? So soon? Don’t you need to think about it?”
“You must have brought some. Your Montagnard buddy here ‘infected’ the surveillance, he said. I presume that’s to complicate their logistics. With the virtue effect, they won’t be useful to the opposition for a while, unless they can brainwash them. But that means you got a needle around here somewhere, or one of you can just bite me. So do it. We might have a crash on the way. They might come after us before we get to this bunker of yours. I don’t wanna miss out on immortality because I was too timid.”
Daniel shrugged, not really surprised. “No one would ever call you timid, Dad. Okay, Spooky, you heard the man. Shoot him up.”
Spooky silently took out the syringe.
A moment later his dad rolled down his sleeve, then sat back. “Now what?”
“Now we wait. There’s some protein shakes in that box on the floor – hey Spooky, pass me one, will you?” Daniel guzzled a can. “You might as well drink one now. And I’ll tell you how we’re going to make a better world.”
-22-
Infection Day Minus Seven.
“Mister Nightingale? Mister Nguyen?” The gate agent was perky, professional. “You’re traveling together? How nice to see. Here’s your passports and your cabin assignment. One of our Premier Suites. This packet has everything you need to know, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask one of the staff or crew. Welcome aboard Royal Princes Cruise Lines’ Royal Neptune, and have a wonderful cruise.”
Larry and Spooky took back their passports and put on their best smiles, but declined the standard picture-taking as they boarded. Port Canaveral, Florida was perpetually sunny, the air fresh and sweet rolling in off the Atlantic.
Larry adjusted his sunglasses. “I guess Vinny spoofed their computers all right. That was the hardest part of this whole gig, sweating in line, waiting to get matched against some kind of watch list.”
“Yes. My nephew is very competent, if undisciplined. He say it is easier to hack into cruise line computers and make software ignore us than hack into government computers and take us off the lists.”
They proceeded through ornate and luxurious spaces toward the rear of the ship, where their cabin sat facing aft. One of the first-class suites, it was second only to a few exclusive and unadvertised luxury living spaces above them, cleverly designed to be difficult to find unless you knew where to go, and hard to see into from the surrounding balconies and observation decks.
Opening the door with his keycard, Larry found their luggage already in place inside. “Compliments of Royal Princes! We livin’ large now,” he cried as he picked up a bottle of champagne cooling in a bucket on the table. He put it down to lift a suitcase onto one of the luggage caddies, unlocking it with a combination.
His eyes roved over several plastic bottles that had been carefully opened, filled with Eden Plague solution, and repacked just like new. To any inspection they would appear to be just bottles of popular soft drink. They had even added some food dye to complete the illusion. Many people brought their own particular favorite drinks or foods on a cruise; it would arouse no suspicion, and the bottles could be carried around openly.
Spooky reached over and pulled a clean new laptop out of the suitcase, packed next to the bottles; it was a powerful model with tremendous graphics capability. It booted up quickly and soon a flash drive on his key fob dumped stolen plans of their ship into the computer’s memory.
No firearms this time; it was too risky, though he had a ceramic and carbon-fiber knife that was virtually invisible to the luggage scanners. Nguyen strapped it onto his forearm. He took out another laptop, booted it up and hard-linked it to the first machine so there was nothing to intercept over a wireless connection. He immediately started reviewing their intended actions, taking himself on yet another virtual rehearsal.
“I’m hungry,” complained Larry.
“You always hungry, Larry. But you right, I’m hungry too. Nothing is open yet during boarding. Here is food.” He opened one of his smaller cases, turning it around to show its load of high-calorie, high-protein snacks.
Larry looked at the selection with distaste. “I’m so sick of nuts and protein shakes I could puke. I’m gonna go through the buffet like a buzz saw through balsa wood.” He unenthusiastically picked up a plastic bag full of trail mix and began eating, washing it down with champagne.
Spooky grabbed a big bag of wasabi chips and munched while staring at his computer screen. “I gonna do all the hard work this op, I think.”
“It’s not like I can blend in with the service staff below-decks, Spooky. How many three-hundred-pound – well, two-sixty now – black men do you think they got cleaning rooms or waiting tables? Ze-ro, that’s how many. I’m just here to be a jailer, and enjoy the par-tay.”