Chapter One
5:05 p.m. March 27th
“The only soldier who doesn’t carry survival equipment is a dead soldier,” Special Forces medic Walter River said to his audience, a room full of men and women in camo. Too full. Fuck the chairs, there wasn’t enough floor space left for someone to squat.
The heat inside the room intensified the illusion of claustrophobia and coated his tongue in an acid so corrosive it stabbed at his gag reflex. He fought the pull of his mind as it tried to take him back to another time and place, when heat had rolled across him in waves, and death hung in the air—a moment when his body had known only confused pain, jumbled memory, and bitter betrayal.
Nope, not going back there.
“What do you carry that will keep you alive?” River forced himself to ask his workshop participants.
Several put up their hands and offered the obvious: compass, knife, matches. He was about to ask them to think with their hindbrain, the hypothalamus—also known as the holy shit I’m going to die neural structure—when there was a sharp rap on the door. A young soldier saluted and informed him the base commander wanted to see River in his office.
He glanced at his group. “Put together a complete list before I come back.”
When River entered Major Ramsey’s office, the officer held out the phone without saying a word.
“Hello,” River said into the receiver, frowning.
“Sergeant River, my name is Dr. Rodrigues. I’m with the CDC. You were recommended to me by Colonel Maximillian from the Army’s Biological Response Team. I need you on the ground at the University Medical Center of El Paso to assist in a medical emergency.”
What the fuck did that mean?
He glanced at the base commander. The man thrust his chin at the door, which meant there was only one thing River could say.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Transport is being arranged. I’ll meet you outside the emergency entrance.” She hung up.
“I’m on loan?” River asked the major.
“Take your weapon.” It was an order.
Well, shit. He was back in the game.
River was dropped off at the ER entrance for the medical center fifteen minutes later. He didn’t have to wait long for a petite older woman, her gray hair pulled back into a bun, striding toward him. “Sergeant River?”
“River is fine, ma’am. Dr. Rodrigues?”
“Yes. Put this on.” She handed him a respirator, the kind people wore in zombie apocalypse movies. Not a good sign.
“Could you wait here for a few minutes?” She sighed, just like his mother would have prior to delivering a lecture on male brains and their lack of common sense. “I have a situation to deal with before I fill you in on everything.”
“Sure.”
She was gone before he got the word out.
He stood there and took in his surroundings. There were three ambulances in front of the entrance already, and the approaching sound of sirens made it clear there was about to be another one.
Busy place.
Five minutes later, another ambulance showed up. A few minutes after that, yet another rolled in, but there was no one left to receive the patient.
Enough standing around. River abandoned his watch position in favor of wading into the fray.
He stepped up to the rear doors of the newly-arrived ambulance, threw them open, and grabbed hold of the end of the gurney inside. He paused, waiting for the paramedic riding in the back to do his bit, but those seconds were more than enough time for the condition of the interior to register.
Holy fuck. The ambulance was splattered with blood, and God only knew what other body fluids. Supplies littered the floor, making it look like a fight had broken out inside the vehicle.
Only there weren’t any green rage monsters or kung-fu movie extras to explain the chaos. Just the paramedic and a patient lying unmoving on a gurney.
River waited while the paramedic got to his feet and ensured all the IV lines were untangled before pushing the gurney out. With the majority of his face covered by an air-purifying respirator almost identical to the one River wore, it was hard to tell how the guy felt about the condition of his patient, the situation, or even of his vehicle.
Concern, fear, embarrassment?
Six years in the Special Forces had taught him to compartmentalize emotions and events and his responses to them. The shit going down today had him hanging on to his training by the ends of his fingertips. A cold, painful lump crouched underneath his sternum. Not fear or panic, but close. Alien and unwelcome.
Focus.
River held his end up as the rolling bed cleared the bumper and its retractable legs stretched toward the ground.
The paramedic gave River’s Army uniform a measuring glance. “You work here?”
“No, just got here to help about ten minutes ago.” River jerked his head in the direction of the emergency entrance to the University Medical Center of El Paso. “There are nurses inside.”
“Thanks.” The paramedic pushed his patient toward the wide doors.
Behind the guy’s ambulance, another rolled in. That would make a total of six since River arrived.
The pit of his gut wound tighter and tighter until he wasn’t sure he could even swallow.
He’d seen this movie—one of those medical thrillers where everyone dies—but he never thought he’d be in the middle of one. Again.
Someone called his name.
He looked away from the ambulances to find his new boss of ten minutes waving at him to join her. Next to her stood a man in a dark suit and a respirator of the same type as his own.
Dr. Rodrigues led the way to a spot where they were out of the way but could observe the foot traffic going in and out of the ER doors.
“Ma’am,” River said respectfully. “How can I help?” He nodded at the other man.
“This is Agent John Dozer from Homeland Security. He’s their lead agent here.”
“I’d shake your hand, Sergeant,” Dozer said, “but personal contact of any kind is now prohibited.” He tilted his head toward the doctor.
So, even Homeland Security had to listen to her. Good to know.
“I asked for you because you’ve dealt with outbreak conditions before, yes?” she asked River.
“Middle Eastern refugee camp. Last year.” Just thinking about it gave him a headache. He’d been shot and kicked in the head by someone he’d trusted. His injuries had cost him more than nearly a day’s worth of memories; they’d cost him the unconscious trust a soldier needed to have in his brothers-in-arms. “Some asshole terrorist decided to test his homemade super rabies on several thousand old men, women, and children. A lot of them died.”
He studied the doctor, but aside from the deepening of the angry lines bracketing her face, she didn’t react. What was he missing?
A glance at the agent provided no more information.
Two more ambulances pulled up, their lights flashing.
A lot of people were getting sick fast. The situation had too much in common with the one he’d been in before, but with one big difference.
This wasn’t the Middle East; this was El Paso, Texas, USA.
Shit.
He took another look at the doctor. Despite the particle mask respirator she wore over her face, she looked as if she was ready to strangle someone to death with her bare hands. “You think this is man-made?”
“Man-made,” she agreed, nearly biting off the end of the word.
Now he understood why he was here, when he should have been back on base teaching his class on surviving with minimal equipment.
He was going to get to go asshole hunting.
“At least you’ve some experience with outbreak conditions,” she continued. “Most of the law-enforcement people here have never seen anything like it. They may balk at some of the measures that need to be taken.”
She didn’t sound happy about it. Nope, Dr. Rodrigues appeared to have about as much patience for bullshit as he did. A characteristic he appreciated in a commander, supervisor, or whatever the hell title she wore.
“I’ll be vocal with my support of those measures, then. The punishment for ignoring an expert in this sort of thing is usually lethal.” He gave her a respectful nod. “Orders?”
“I’m expecting assistance to arrive from the National Guard in a couple of hours, but until they get here, we’re stretched thin. Most of my people are either treating the infected, working on identifying the pathogen, or preparing to decontaminate a list of possible infected places. The infection seems heaviest at the university. But, I’ve sent in an investigator to collect samples at a coffee shop that may be at the center of this outbreak. The earliest infections appear to be concentrated in that location. I’d like you to keep an eye on her and assist, if she needs it.”
“At the site?”
“Please. While Dr. Lloyd is an excellent medical investigator, she’s at the location alone and isn’t familiar working with local law enforcement. I’d like to avoid any conflict.”
Conflict associated with scientists usually meant a lack of communication.
“Is she the absentminded professor sort or more of a you’re too stupid to understand type?”
Rodrigues tilted her head to one side, giving his question surprisingly serious consideration. “She’s more of a no patience for idiots person. She works fine with anyone who behaves like they have half a brain.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, there are far too many people in positions of authority who are lucky if they have more than two brain cells to rub together.”
River snorted a laugh. “That I can work with.”
“I’ll get you set up with our Emergency Crisis Communication system, ECC. It’s a Bluetooth cell phone on steroids. We have our own mobile satellite uplink and broadcasting tower. Your earpiece also has a camera and a tiny screen. When it’s turned on, you can either see who you’re talking to or see what they see.” She pointed at her ear.
The device looked very much like a Bluetooth cell phone, only slightly larger, with a screen attached to a short arm positioned just outside of the line of sight.
“Cool.”
“You’ll have to wear a hazmat suit.”
“Why?” He pointed at his respirator. “I thought this was good enough.”
“Here, it is, but we don’t know how the pathogen was initially introduced. I’m inclined to err on the side of safety.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll give you a ride,” Dozer said. “I’ve got people headed there, too.” He motioned toward a black SUV parked outside the ER entrance.
“Sergeant River?”
He stopped to look back. “Ma’am?”
“Take your rifle.”
He’d only ever seen eyes that grim in combat.
…
6:03 p.m.
The hole-in-the-wall café in front of microbiologist Ava Lloyd looked so ordinary, except for the overturned chairs, puddles of spilled coffee on the cement, and yellow police and biohazard tape surrounding the outdoor courtyard serving the café.
Safety and biohazard protocols had been followed and security measures taken. It was time to get to work.
Ava let out a deep breath and strode forward to duck under the tape. The hazmat suit she wore made it awkward. The crowd of Emergency Services personnel standing at either end of the courtyard, watching as if it were reality TV, made her feel like a hippopotamus trying to tap dance.
Dancing had never been one of her strengths.
Reading was. She’d read the case file for this incident in under ten minutes, thirty minutes ago, and her breathing still hadn’t returned to normal.
The shop had opened at six o’clock, serving early risers both coffee and breakfast on the go. At eleven in the morning, a half dozen people, mostly students from the University of El Paso, had stumbled into the University Medical Center’s ER within fifteen minutes of each other, with the same symptoms. High fever, headache, and confusion. Those symptoms grew rapidly worse. Two of the students were dead by two in the afternoon.
In the three hours since the first patient had entered the ER and the first death, another thirty people had either arrived at the UMC’s ER on their own or had been transported there by ambulance, all with high fevers and headaches. For some, the confusion became paranoid hallucinations, and they had to be restrained.
The hospital called the Center for Disease Control. The CDC sent an investigative team to determine the cause and epicenter for the outbreak, and patient zero.
Ava was part of a twelve-person team responsible for determining if there was, in fact, an outbreak, what caused it, and a treatment regimen. Within an hour, her team leader, Dr. Rodrigues, had determined there was an outbreak of some kind and called for additional help, but not enough of it had arrived yet.
It wasn’t until the three staff members at the café had collapsed, two with blood coming out of their noses and ears, that the team suspected where the outbreak started. The identity of patient zero, the person who’d brought the disease to the coffee shop as a carrier, or as its first victim, was yet to be determined. There were now too many patients to deal with. This was the best place to start investigating.
Ava expected the café to be disorganized and dirty. Yet, if she ignored the overturned chairs and coffee spilled as panic had taken hold of the customers when the police arrived, it appeared clean and orderly.
The bodies of the two dead university students in the hospital morgue begged to differ.
Ava had been tapped for the job of collecting samples from the restaurant, while the rest of the team continued to deal with the hospitalized victims and identifying the pathogen.
The fatality count wasn’t going to stay at two for long.
The area was eerily quiet, and combined with the knowledge that every move she made was being monitored by her CDC boss, the local police, the FBI, and Homeland Security, she found herself shaking harder than a leaf on a tree during a hurricane.
Get it together, idiot. You’re on camera.
Dr. Rodrigues spoke calmly despite the view she had via the tiny webcam on the Bluetooth receiver hugging Ava’s ear. “Ensure you swab all the tables, as well as all the work surfaces inside the café.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ava replied as she adjusted the gloves of her hazmat suit one last time.
“A helicopter will be waiting to take your samples when you’re done. Until we know what this is and how it’s spread, treat this as a level four pathogen. All decontamination procedures must be strictly enforced.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Fantastic. The first pathogen she got to investigate as a CDC employee showed Anthrax-level lethality.
No pressure there.
“I’m keeping this call open in case you need support,” Dr. Rodrigues added.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ava replied, keeping her tone neutral.
Collecting samples wasn’t a technically difficult job—she’d been in weirder places and had sampled odder things—she’d just never done it with so many people watching her and evaluating every move she made.
Ava approached the first table and proceeded to swab its surface, then moved on to the next table and the next, working from the outside of the presumed infection zone inward. She’d collected just over twenty samples and was about to enter the work area of the café, when in the corner of her eye, movement caught her attention.
A young man stumbled and weaved toward the café’s order counter. Blond, clean cut, and no older than twenty, he was dressed in jeans and a hoodie and had a backpack hanging heavy on his back. Just like every other student at the university.
How the hell had he gotten past the police? No one should be anywhere near this place without wearing a hazmat suit. It was extremely unsafe.
She walked toward the counter, her mouth open to demand he leave at once, but the dazed, blank look on his face stopped her from saying anything. That, and the beads of sweat clinging to his forehead.
Shit. Could he be another ambulatory victim of the pathogen?
“Are you all right?” she asked him very carefully instead.
He blinked, then finally seemed to focus on her as a trickle of perspiration ran down the side of his face.
The temperature was moderate, certainly not high enough to make anyone sweat.
Oh yeah, he had whatever was killing people. Where the heck had he come from? Had he passed out in some corner or closet and just woken up?
“I’m here to deliver a message to the United States government and its citizens,” he intoned, as if he were the voice of doom. He lifted his hand into the air, showing off the cell phone in his hand as if it were a detonator.
Maybe it was. The air in her chest froze solid, then broke up into ragged shards, piercing her insides with every breath.
“Something tells me,” Ava said quietly, “his backpack isn’t full of textbooks.”
“Shit.” Dr. Rodrigues’s horrified voice whispered into her ear.
“Not helpful,” she whispered back.
“Our leaders are corrupt,” he continued, weaving on his feet, turning in a circle as if expecting a crowd of people was surrounding him. “Responsible for the deaths of thousands of women and ch…children.”
Only the crowd was too far away for making the kind of statement terrorists seemed to want these days. The kind that turned crowds into panicked mobs.
Now what was she supposed to do? Continue taking samples? Something told her he probably wouldn’t like it. Terrorists weren’t supposed to look like an average American college student.
“No one is here,” Ava said as gently as she could, as she dared, “but me.”
The young man frowned, glanced around, then asked, “Where did they go?”
She had to work to keep her tone even, when everything inside her wanted to run away screaming. “They, um…left.”
“Left?” The young man looked around again. “But I was supposed to deliver a message to the American p…public. Force the military to withdraw troops from…” His voice trailed off.
“Some of them got sick,” Ava offered tentatively.
“Oh,” the terrorist said, looking at her with a fuzzy sort of pleased expression. “Good. That’s what’s supposed to happen.”
Good?
Was he the delivery system? Patient zero? Had someone gotten him sick, then sent him to a popular coffee shop to infect as many people as he could?
It wasn’t something he could have done on his own, could he?
“So far, sweetheart,” an unfamiliar masculine voice said into her ear, startling her, “you’re doing just fine.”
Where had Dr. Rodrigues gone?
“Who is this?” she asked, lowering her voice as quietly as possible so the terrorist-in-training wouldn’t overhear.
“He’s a security specialist,” Dr. Rodrigues said, her voice high with stress. “He’s working with us. I’ve got a situation here at the hospital I have to deal with. Take good care of Dr. Lloyd, Sergeant River.”
“I will,” he said. There was a click, and then he spoke again. “I’m one of the guys who gets brought into this kind of situation when the shit hits the fan.”
There was a lot of background noise, rapid footsteps, people talking. Whoever this Sergeant River was, he was on the move.
A police negotiator, maybe. Whatever his job, his voice was smooth, dark, and deep.
The sort of voice capable of giving you a thrill, even if you never saw its owner. If she had to take orders from someone she didn’t know, at least she could enjoy it.
“Keep your volume low and don’t get excited,” he continued. “Dr. Rodrigues figures your boy has whatever bug all the rest at the hospital have.” His tone implied this was a positive thing. She wasn’t so sure.
“Is that good news?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the terrorist.
Oops, she’d spoken a little too loud.
“He might pass out,” Mr. Smooth said. “Which would be the best-case scenario.”
The terrorist didn’t look any closer to unconsciousness than he had a couple of minutes ago. “So, we wait?” she asked.
“I’m supposed to wait for further instructions,” the terrorist answered with a wobbly nod.
“I’m moving into position to help you,” Mr. Smooth said. “But, it’s going to take a few minutes.”
“What does that mean?” She really had to stop thinking of him as Mr. Smooth. She might use the moniker out loud. His name was River, Sergeant River.
Please be police and not military. In her experience, military meant a combative attitude with little regard to safety. Just what she didn’t need.
What she did need was a man who lived up to his centered, calm, seductive voice.
“Just keep him busy. Offer him a seat,” River suggested. “He sounds confused, so make him feel comfortable. In control.”
Well, finally something she knew how to do with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked the terrorist.
“Small nonfat latte with caramel drizzle.” He said it absently, by rote. He’d probably ordered the same drink hundreds of times.
“Coming right up,” Ava said, trying to ignore her shaking hands as she revved up the espresso machine.
“How much?” he asked.
“On the house,” she told him as she worked, only slightly slower thanks to the hazmat suit. “You’ve ah…earned it today.”
“Excellent,” River said to her. “Smart girl.”
“I’m not a girl,” she muttered as she made the drink and passed it across the counter to the terrorist-in-training. She was an experienced doctor, goddamn it.
“What are you wearing?” the young man asked her, his expression clearing. “Are you with the police?”
She froze, her mind unable to come up with a single reasonable thing to say.
“Tell him it’s get-your-geek-on day,” River suggested.
“It’s a costume.” Ava pasted a smile onto her face. “Pajama day is next week.”
The terrorist frowned, but relaxed a fraction. “Oh.” He took a sip of his coffee, and his face lit up. “Good coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“See if you can get him to sit down,” River advised. “Keep him talking.”
Maintaining the smile on her face was starting to hurt. “Please, take any seat in the house,” she said to the young man. “I’ll bring you a…snack.”
The terrorist obediently sat on the closest chair.
That was way too easy. She’d met a lot of sick people. Most of them got suspicious and argumentative when faced with a stranger in a hazmat suit, not acquiescent.
“Have you got a plan?” Ava asked the man on the phone as she grabbed a pastry from the display case and walked around the counter to give it to a man who looked like he was still in his teens.
“In motion, sweetheart,” River said. “All you need to do is keep that loony tune distracted.”
“Here you are.” She handed the terrorist a piece of banana bread. “Oh, would you like butter for that?”
“Yes, please,” he answered, his voice so low in volume she almost didn’t hear him.
He was starting to sway in his seat.
Come on, dude. Pass out, pass out.
His cell phone rang, startling both of them.
It was the Darth Vader ringtone.
“Seriously?” River said in her ear. “Does he think he’s feeling the Force or some shit like that?”
Ava had to bite her lip to keep from snorting. Humor was completely uncalled for, the situation dangerous in a way she’d never experienced before. So, why did she want to laugh so much?
The terrorist answered the phone. “Hi.”
He listened for a moment, then nodded, ended the call, and looked into her eyes, regret turning the corners of his lips down.
Nausea doused the urge to laugh and twisted her stomach painfully as he said the last thing she wanted to hear.
“I’m sorry.”