Pandemic Page 139

Although not at Dana’s level, the men were all quite brilliant: Robert McMasters, the president and CEO of the energy company Exelon; Cody Ha.s.san, who had apparently been an up-and-coming jazz musician; and Jeremy Ellis, a young geneticist who held multiple Ph.D.s. McMasters was hard at work on preserving the power grid. Ha.s.san helped craft the messages to send through Brownstone’s network. Ellis was already modifying facilities at the University of Chicago so he could study both the biology of the Chosen Ones, and how to defeat the humans’ inoculation formula.

All four of them were afraid to make a noise. They all sensed Steve’s fury. That, and their eyes kept flicking to the two huge bulls that stood behind him.

Three workers sat in front of his three laptops. All three screens showed the same YouTube video. Steve pointed to the middle screen.

“Cooper Mitch.e.l.l shot this inside a building. Which building? What floor?”

Brownstone and the men said nothing.

Steve drew a black pistol from a thigh holster. The weapon had belonged to a cop. The cop didn’t need it anymore; he had tasted delicious.

Steve aimed it at Ha.s.san’s face and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked in his hand. Ha.s.san’s head snapped backward. He dropped, probably dead even before his limp body hit the floor.

Steve holstered the pistol. “I said … what building?”

Brownstone shook her head. “We don’t know, Emperor! The video quality is terrible. We can’t identify any key structural elements. We think it’s a hotel or an office building, but there’s over a hundred and thirty million square feet of office s.p.a.ce in the central business district alone. He could be anywhere.”

Steve looked down at the man running the middle laptop.

“Refresh,” he said. “And play it again.”

The man did as he was told. As the window came up, Steve looked at the number of plays: 132,512. The views were climbing, fast. He didn’t know if that was from uninfected watching it with a final sense of hope, his own kind watching it with a feeling of horrific dread, or a combination of both.

The video played. Steve wondered what Cooper would taste like. He’d never find out, of course, because Cooper was a walking plague.

If only he’d just let Bo Pan kill the man …

“Isolate his face from this video,” Steve said. “Then print pictures. Thousands of pictures.”

He turned to his four — correction, his three — top followers.

“Spread the word that everyone is to look for this man. Search every building, every office, every bas.e.m.e.nt. If someone finds him, kill him on the spot, whatever it takes.”

Ellis raised his hand. “Emperor, the people who kill him might very well contract the disease he carries and transmit it to the rest of us. If it’s as contagious as it appears to be in the video, it could spread like wildfire through the Chosen Ones — it could eventually reach us.”

That was a good point. Steve was glad he hadn’t shot the scientist.

“Whatever group takes out Cooper Mitch.e.l.l is to kill themselves immediately,” Steve said. “They will go straight to heaven. They will be heroes. Now move. And send someone in here to clean up this body. Tell them to bring a mop.”

ALL THE MARBLES

It made Margaret’s skin crawl to be so close to them.

She, Clarence, Tim and Commander Klimas were packed into the same mission module where they had teleconferenced with Murray and Dr. Cheng. Margaret and Clarence sat on one side of the table, Tim on the other. Klimas stood in front of a screen that showed a map of Chicago.

He pointed out the landing area on the city’s coast. “My team will OTB to Lake Sh.o.r.e Park on the city’s east side and secure it as a landing zone.”

Tim raised a hand. “OTB?”

“Over the beach,” Klimas said. “The phrase covers the various methods we use. Sorry, I’ll try to make the rest of this more civilian-friendly. We also have air support from two Apaches, three Predator drones, and — believe it or not — a B2 bomber.”

“A B2?” Clarence said. “That’s kind of overkill, isn’t it?”

“Not if we find the Converted gathering en ma.s.se,” Klimas said. “It’s loaded with five-hundred-pound JDAM bombs, could take out a lot of them at once.” He paused, cleared his throat. “It’s also got, ah … well, it has a nuke.”

They would never learn. Margaret knew the nuke had delayed things in Detroit, but the current situation showed that her kind could not be stopped. When the Converted rebuilt, they would just steer clear of any radioactive craters.

Klimas again pointed to the map.

“Once my team secures the LZ, Chinook helicopters will deliver the Ranger company, which is under the command of Captain Percy Dundee. We will then move about a half mile west to the Park Tower Hotel. SEALs lead and Rangers support by leapfrogging blocking positions at major intersections. If Cooper Mitch.e.l.l is at the Park Tower, we grab him and get him out. We’ll have close air support for the entire operation. Apaches will fly low and loud to intimidate the bad guys, and take out any organized force that might come to meet us. Easy as pie.”

The video from Cooper Mitch.e.l.l had changed the game. Margaret knew it was the real thing from the moment she’d seen it. He had the hydras — and from the looks of that video, they were far more contagious than she had thought. The Antichrist had risen again.

She had to find a way to kill him. If Klimas was successful, if he brought Cooper Mitch.e.l.l out alive, then Margaret had no doubts of what would come next: in a few weeks, she and all her kind would be dead.