Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 20

Church's expression was flat. "It means that bodies may be harder to identify."

The silence was fierce.

Church eventually added, "And our infrastructure is working on a vacation schedule except for police, who will be challenged with crowd control and traffic management. If there is some kind of coordinated terrorist action-either by a foreign power or something homegrown-this is a ripe opportunity."

Interlude Six St. Michael's Hospital Baltimore, Maryland Four Years Ago Artemisia Bliss sat in a car and watched a hospital burn.

Twenty-five minutes ago there had been more than one hundred and eighty-six civilians in the east wing of the hospital. Doctors and nurses, staff, patients, and visitors.

Now there was only flame and smoke. And a few fading screams.

Thirty-one minutes ago EMTs brought in a gunshot victim named Javad Mustapha, a suspected terrorist who'd been shot by a Baltimore police officer during a joint police/Homeland task force raid on a cell by the docks. Sergeant Dietrich told Bliss that several other terrorists were dead and some cops had been hurt. The E.R. was busy. But Javad Mustapha was definitely DOA.

Except that he wasn't.

Somehow he wasn't.

Impossibly, he wasn't.

The video-cam feed from the Baker Team agents who had intercepted Javad and accompanied him to the hospital was like something out of a fever dream. Horror show stuff.

Working on some sketchy intelligence that Javad might have been infected with some new kind of weaponized pathogen, Mr. Church ordered Baker Team to oversee the transport of his body to the hospital and the taking of all appropriate samples.

But something went wrong.

As the body was being transferred from a gurney, Javad suddenly woke up.

If that was even the right way to phrase it.

One moment he was slack, clearly dead from gunshot wounds, and then he sat up, grabbed the closest agent, and bit his throat. There was so much blood. Pints of red driven by that hydrostatic pressure, bathing Javad's face as he tore at the dying agent's windpipe and jugular.

The second agent drew his weapon and shot Javad in the side. Twice, three times.

But instead of collapsing, Javad turned and hurled himself at the agent. The Baker Team shooter fired twice more as he was borne to the floor, and the bullets punched all the way through Javad's stomach. One hit the ceiling and the other hit the pathologist in the chest.

The agent and Javad rolled around on the floor and for a moment the helmet cam showed nothing but wildly blurred movement.

The screams, though.

The screams.

They told what was happening with grotesque eloquence.

Aunt Sallie was in charge of the Tactical Operations Center at the Hangar and she immediately ordered backup into the hospital. The rest of Baker and Charlie teams raced inside. Twenty of the best special operators in the world.

Their helmet cams were all working.

Bliss and Hu watched all of this from inside a DMS SUV parked outside the hospital where they waited for the collected samples and also for the computer records from the task force raid. They were not even aware they were holding hands, but later each of them would have bruises on their fingers.

The car's TV monitors played the images from all of those helmet cams. They saw more impossible things. The two agents that had been bitten came surging out of a stairwell and fell upon their comrades. The incoming agents did not fire.

Not at first.

Instead they stared in total, numb, uncomprehending shock at what was happening.

Then they tried to help.

They slung their rifles and stepped in to try and pull the infected agents away from the newly bitten. It was an act of brotherhood, of fellows.h.i.+p, of compa.s.sion.

And they died for it as the infected turned on them. A small bite here, a bigger bite there. Men staggered backward from the melee, bleeding and screaming.

The other agents panicked.

Some retreated, totally unprepared for this, unable to respond, their training lost in the madness of the moment.

Others, either colder or hardier men, opened fire.

Aiming for legs. Shooting to wound. To disable that which could not be disabled.

The injured bled out.

Died.

And came back.

Javad joined the frenzy. Killing, wounding, and then loping down the hallway, gibbering and moaning, seeking fresh prey.

Some of the agents followed. Living and dead.

There was continuous gunfire for as long as ammunition and life remained.

And then, when there was no one left who looked or acted like a DMS soldier, the real slaughter began. There was so much life here. Even sickness was life. One hundred and eighty-six civilians.

Soon, one hundred and eighty-six monsters.

Then Alpha Team showed up.

By now the hospital was lost, overrun.

Mr. Church and Gus Dietrich were there. So was Major Courtland. And Bliss almost screamed as Javad and a knot of infected burst through a doorway and attacked the three senior DMS staff.

Dietrich drew his sidearm and began firing double-taps to the chest. Infected fell from the impact of the bullets, but they did not stay down. He and Courtland stood side by side, firing, reloading, firing.

Javad ran around them. Dietrich twisted and hit him twice with rounds in the side of the chest. It should have exploded the man's heart and lungs. But Javad drove straight for Mr. Church, hands reaching, red mouth wide to bite.

Church stood his ground, his face grave but without fear. As Javad lunged at him, Church slapped the reaching arms to one side and fired a Taser point-blank into Javad's mangled face. The flechettes buried themselves in the dead terrorist's cheeks and the gun sent two joules of electrical power into what remained of the central nervous system of the infected.

Javad Mustapha fell, immediately and with all the grace of a toppled mannequin. Bliss watched Mr. Church evaluate that and then study the gunplay unfolding around him. In her earbud, Bliss could hear him ordering everyone back, recalling the remaining DMS troops in the building. Church stood by the open door until the last stragglers-some of them bleeding from bites-staggered out into the parking lot. By now a sleek DMS Black Hawk helicopter was in the air above the lot.

"Kill all cell phone feeds," Church ordered. "Cut all phone lines and jam the signals from the press. Do it now."

Bliss took her hand back from Hu and immediately began hitting keys. Bug said that he was doing the same, both of them using the Blackout software package they'd written to Church's specs. Maybe there was an Executive Order on file to approve this kind of thing, but probably not. Church needed it done and they did it.

"Done," said Bug.

"Done," said Bliss.

Then she heard Church address the pilot and speak two words that sent a thrill through her entire body.

He said, "Burn it."

A moment later the Black Hawk launched its full complement of h.e.l.lfire missiles at the hospital. In seconds the entire place was burning.

A pyre.

Bliss stopped typing and leaned slowly forward to study Mr. Church. The ma.s.sive fire was reflected in the lenses of his tinted gla.s.ses and for a moment Bliss had the irrational feeling that she was seeing inside his mind, that behind his stony face real fires burned.

Something s.h.i.+fted inside her own mind. Gears were stripped as she thought about everything that had just happened.

A designer pathogen so dangerous and sophisticated that it killed everyone who was infected-killed them and then raised them from death to become vectors for the spread of the disease. That was something military scientists had discussed since the Cold War. It was science fiction stuff. Horror story stuff. But now ...

Real.

Right here.

Such power.

And Church himself. In the heat of the fight he was cool, efficient, his actions uncomplicated by any acceptance of his own emotions. Whatever he felt about what was happening Church kept chained in his head. It made him seem inhuman. Not less than human.

More than human.

Bliss felt heat flash through her body as if she could feel the fire that was reflected on Church's gla.s.ses, and on his skin. Her own cheeks grew hot and she was glad they were inside a darkened vehicle.

Church was unlike anyone Bliss had ever known.

Completely in control.

So powerful.

With a word he'd called down h.e.l.lfire and destroyed the entire hospital. At once stopping the immediate spread of the plague and demonstrating a level of personal power that was greater than anything Bliss had encountered. And she'd met generals and presidents.

Burn it.

That's what he'd said.

"G.o.d..." she breathed.

Beside her, Hu said, "I know, right? This is f.u.c.king nuts!"

She nodded, but it was in no way a response to his comment or enthusiasm. Hu was already excited, happy in his own way, that there would be new puzzles to solve, new toys to play with. He was a genius sociopath, and as such he was less evolved, less interesting than Church.

No, Church was no sociopath. He did care about people. He cared quite a lot. So much that he was willing to take a scalpel to the skin of the world in order to carve out the cancers. He was willing to burn the sick and dying, the helpless and the desperate in order to save the city, maybe the world.

That was power.

That was real G.o.dd.a.m.n power.

Bliss felt a wave of erotic need surge through her and she almost moaned.

It was not completely a desire to hold someone that powerful in her arms or between her thighs. No ... she imagined what it would be like to touch her own flesh and to know that the person inside that body was this powerful.

To be as powerful as Church.

To be more powerful.

"G.o.d," she said again.

Chapter Thirty.

Corner of Fifth Avenue and Garfield Street Park Slope, Brooklyn Sunday, August 31, 12:19 p.m.

"There it is," said Bunny, nodding toward the intersection just ahead. He angled the black Crown Victoria toward the curb and parked near a bistro on the corner of Garfield and Fifth. It was a lovely area, with leafy green trees and moderate car and foot traffic. The Surf Shop was catty-corner.

We were in a nondescript Lincoln Town Car. Well, by nondescript I mean it pretty much shouted "federal agents," but it wasn't an armored personnel carrier. No rocket launchers mounted on the hood. I was in the front seat with Bunny, and Top was in the back with Ghost. Despite all regulations to the contrary, Top was slowly scratching Ghost between the ears, and my dog was, from all indications, floating in a lazy orbit around Neptune. His eyelids fluttered and occasional s.h.i.+vers rippled down his back.

There was a bing-bong in my earbud and then Church's voice. "Deacon to Cowboy."

"Go for Cowboy," I said.

"There have been eleven additional acts of random violence in different parts of the country. In four cases crimes were committed by young women wearing the same gla.s.ses and wig as Mother Night. It's likely this is being done to foil facial recognition, and probably to send a message, a reinforcement of the anarchist model."

"Ah," said Top, "black bloc?"

"That's our guess," agreed Church.

Bunny frowned at Top and mouthed the words black bloc, clearly unsure of the reference. Top held up a finger.

"Whatever is happening appears to be heating up. Proceed with caution," warned Church.

"Copy that," I said and disconnected.

Bunny turned off the engine. "What's a black bloc? Or is it a hip-hop thing?"