5
A few miles away, a brooding figure sat in a small Zodiac boat, one that he’d stolen from the doomed freighter. Ammon Ta had escaped the ship by making his way aft to the boat, complete with a radio that the freighter’s crew normally used to inspect the hull.
He’d been no more than a hundred feet from the ship when the blast occurred. Far too close. He should have been killed by the concussion wave, if not incinerated completely, but the dull thud of the explosion had only startled him. The ship hadn’t been obliterated as he’d expected.
Something had gone wrong. His immediate instinct was to reboard the ship, and despite the initial explosion, the freighter was still running flat out and the little boat he’d commandeered was too slow to catch up.
There had been little he could do but watch the ship continue on until it ran aground and finally exploded in the manner he’d intended.
Even then, things didn’t go quite right. Instead of destroying the cryogenically cooled serum, the fire and explosion had atomized it, creating a killing fog as effective as any nerve gas. He watched helpless as the fog spread to the west, engulfing the island. His attempt to hide what he and his superiors were doing had now been broadcast to the entire world.
As if to prove it, he’d overheard a call for help over the runabout’s radio. It came from a doctor trapped with a number of patients in the island’s main hospital. He heard clearly as she referenced seeing a cloud of gas before quarantining herself and several others.
He made a fateful decision. On the chance the doctor was still alive, he needed to eliminate her and any evidence she might have gathered.
He reached into his pocket, withdrew a prepackaged hypodermic needle and pulled the top off with his teeth. After a quick tap with his finger to make sure there were no bubbles in the syringe, he jabbed it into his leg and pressed the plunger down, injecting himself with an antidote. A cold sensation ran through his body with the medicine and for a moment his hands and feet tingled.
As the feeling subsided, he restarted the Zodiac’s motor and made his way toward the island, angling along the coast until he found a safe spot to go ashore.
Without delay, he began a brisk hike across an empty beach and then up a staircase cut into the rock and onto a narrow road above it.
The hospital was two miles away. And not far from that lay the airport. He would find this doctor, kill her and the other survivors and then make his way to the airport, where he could steal a small plane and depart for Tunisia or Libya, or even Egypt, and no one would ever know he’d been there.
6
“Not exactly what I’d call resort casual,” Joe said.
Bundled up in full diving gear while sitting in a boat on the surface beneath the hot sun was not only uncomfortable and awkward, it was downright claustrophobic. Even the breeze couldn’t reach them through the thickly layered suits.
“Better than choking on poisonous fumes,” Kurt said.
Joe nodded and kept the runabout on course toward the shore.
They were cruising past the breakwater into Lampedusa Harbor. Dozens of small boats dotted the scenic port, bobbing at anchor.
“Not a single hand on deck anywhere,” Joe said.
Kurt looked beyond the water to the roads and buildings lining the harbor. “Front Street looks deserted,” he said. “No traffic at all. Not even a pedestrian.”
Lampedusa had no more than five thousand inhabitants, but, in Kurt’s experience, half of them always seemed to be on the main road at the same time, especially whenever he needed to go somewhere. Scooters and small cars zoomed around in every direction, tiny delivery trucks darted and dodged through the fray, with that uniquely Italian style of daring that suggested half the population could qualify as Formula 1 drivers.
To see the island so quiet gave him a chill. “Cut to the right,” he said. “Go around that sailboat. We can take a shortcut to the operations shack.”
“Shortcut?”
“There’s a private slip over there that’s a lot closer to our building than the main dock,” Kurt said. “I’ve been fishing off it a few times. It’ll save us a lot of walking.”
Joe changed course and they passed the sailboat on the port side. Two figures could be seen slumped on the deck. The first was a man, who seemed to have fallen and gotten one arm tangled in the sail lines. The second was a woman.
“Maybe we should…”
“Nothing we can do for them,” Kurt said. “Keep going.”
Joe didn’t reply, but he kept the boat on course and they were soon tying up at the small pier Kurt had mentioned.
“Guess we don’t have to worry about someone stealing our ride.”
They climbed out of the boat in their bulky suits and quickly reached the lane at the top of the pier. More bodies lay on the street, including a middle-aged couple with a small child and a dog on a leash. Dead birds littered the sidewalk beneath a pair of shade trees.
Kurt walked past the birds and knelt briefly to examine the couple. Except for bruises and scrapes where they’d hit the ground, there was no sign of bleeding or trauma. “It’s like they fell straight down. Taken without warning.”
“Whatever hit these people, it hit quickly,” Joe said.
Kurt looked up, got his bearings and pointed up the next street. “This way.”
He and Joe hiked for two blocks before they reached the small building that NUMA was using for their logistics center. The front was a small garage, now given over to equipment and littered with items recovered from the sunken Roman ship. Behind this lay four small rooms that were being used as offices and sleeping quarters.
“Locked,” Joe said, trying the handle.
Kurt stood back and then stepped forward, slamming his boot into the wooden door. The blow was heavy enough to splinter the wood and send the door swinging wide.
Joe ducked inside. “Larisa?” he shouted. “Cody?”
Kurt shouted as well, though he wondered how much noise actually escaped the helmet. Most of it seemed to reverberate in his ears.
“Let’s check the back rooms,” Kurt urged. “If anyone realized it was a chemical vapor, the best defense would be to seal off the innermost room and hide out.”
They lugged their way to the back of the building and Kurt entered one room to find it empty. Joe pushed open the office door across from him and found something else. “In here.”
Kurt stepped out of the empty room and came around to where Joe stood. Facedown on a table were four of the five team members. It looked as if they’d been studying a map when it hit them. In a chair nearby, slumped as if he’d simply fallen asleep there, was Cody Williams, the Roman antiquities expert who’d been heading up the research.
“Morning meeting,” Kurt said.
“Check them for signs of life.”
“Kurt, they’re not—”
“Check them anyway,” Kurt replied sternly. “We have to be sure.”
Joe checked the group at the table while Kurt checked on Cody, easing him out of the chair and onto the floor. He was deadweight, a rag doll.
Despite shaking him, there was no response.
“I can’t feel a pulse,” Joe said. “Not that I’d expect to through these gloves.”
Joe went to pull one of the gloves off. “Don’t,” Kurt said.
As Joe relented, Kurt brought out a knife and held the flat edge of the blade against the bottom of Cody’s nose. “Nothing,” he said. “No condensation. They’re not breathing.”
He pulled the knife away and lowered Cody’s head gently back to the floor. “What the hell was that freighter carrying?” he muttered aloud. “I don’t know of anything that could do this to a whole island. Except maybe military-grade nerve agents.”