Chapter Ten
10:10 p.m.
Ava guessed that the boy on the bed had been dead for several hours at least, his extremities cool to the touch.
The second bed in the room was empty and unmade. Roger’s? Other than the body, nothing seemed out of place. The contents of the room were exactly what you’d expect in a student’s dorm room. Two twin beds, two desks with a chair each, and two chests of drawers. A few dirty items of clothing were strewn on the floor with no more or less than the normal indifference two young men might display.
It only made the death of the room’s occupant seem that much sadder.
Outside the bedroom, the apartment’s live occupant was having a meltdown.
“Dead?” he demanded of someone, his voice cracking. “What do you mean, he’s dead?”
“Sir.” Palmer’s voice was an order. “Sit down. A medical team is on its way. You need to remain calm until they get here.”
“I’m going to die, too, aren’t I?” the kid wailed as he started to cry. “We’re all going to die!”
Ava put the commotion out of her mind and searched the room slowly, looking for anything obvious that might explain the boy’s death. Nothing. Until she saw one of those warm-it-up-in-the-microwave heating pads around his neck.
Damn.
River was looking in the closet and under the bed. He glanced at her and shook his head. “Nothing.”
She left the bedroom and looked in the kitchen. Dirty dishes in the sink. An open half-loaf of bread on the counter along with a dirty butter knife and an open jar of peanut butter.
There was nothing in the space that said terrorist, radical, or disenfranchised.
Agent Geer stood in the open area between the kitchen and the first bedroom. He could see the feet of the dead boy from where he was standing, but he’d turned away. “Any evidence of what happened here?” he asked her.
“If it weren’t for the heating pad around his neck, I’d say I’d have to wait for the autopsy.”
“Sore neck,” Geer said with a tight, angry mouth.
“Yes.” Another death to add to the total.
“Everything clear?” River asked Geer. “Any weapons or explosives?”
“Not so far,” he replied as he walked into the bedroom.
The bathroom door was closed. Ava walked over and tested the knob. Locked. A knock didn’t result in a response.
“Hello?” she said with more than enough volume for someone to hear through the door. She knocked again, but still no response.
River approached and pulled out a slim tool from his tool kit that looked like something a dentist would use, only the last inch of the tip was perfectly straight. He thrust the tool into the narrow hole of the bathroom doorknob, and with one twist of his wrist, had the door open.
There was no movement or noise from inside the bathroom.
She went to slip past him, her hand seeking out the light switch.
He shifted his weight to block her way. “Wait. Let me clear the room.”
She backed up, and he gave the door a nudge with one foot.
It opened slowly.
The bathroom was dark, and she couldn’t see anything besides linoleum. River stepped into the room and then right back out again.
The smell hit her, one she recognized from her medical school days—decomposition.
“Can you grab my flashlight out of my backpack?” he asked her, both hands on his rifle in such a way that it told her he wasn’t going to let go. “It’s in the outside pocket on the right side.”
She got it and shined it into the room.
A shelving unit stood in the bathtub, covered in glass and plastic containers in a menagerie of sizes. Fluid dripped from somewhere on the shelves onto the bottom of the tub in a steady two-second count.
“Biohazardous?” River asked.
“I can’t see any labels, so I have no idea.” It would be safer to assume the worst, however.
She shined the light toward the sink and counter, passing over the toilet, but paused at a long lump huddled on the floor between the toilet and the counter.
“What?” she began, then caught her breath as the shape resolved into that of a body. It might have taken longer to identify the lump if it weren’t for the flip-flops sticking out from a pair of pajama pants.
She moved the light upward to the counter. A row of metal objects reflected the light dimly. No, they weren’t in a row; they were arranged in a pyramid.
“Out,” River said in a soft, dangerous voice.
“What?” Identifying the substances on the shelving unit was going to be a priority. Examining the dead body, not far behind. Their respirators were perfectly adequate to protect them from any biological substances.
“Back away slowly,” he ordered, his tone no louder than before. He shifted and pushed her backward as he retreated out of the room.
There was too much to do, and she didn’t want to go. “Why?”
His head angled toward the counter. “Those are grenades.”
She looked at the pile of roundish objects. They didn’t look like much. Like someone stacked them there without really thinking about it. “But, they’re just sitting there.”
“No, they’re not,” he hissed. “Out.”
She backed up another foot. “How do you know they’re grenades?” She glanced at the collection of containers on the shelving unit. There were microbiology culture petri dishes behind some of the bottles and several smaller bottles containing no more than a few cc’s of a cloudy fluid. “They could be anything, and I see—”
“Those are M67 fragmentation grenades,” he interrupted, his voice much louder now.
Everyone turned to stare at him for one brief moment, and then there was an explosion of swear words and movement as Palmer grabbed the sick student and hustled him toward the exit.
River pushed her completely out of the bathroom, then grabbed her by the arm and also marched her toward the apartment’s door. “They have a range of about fifty feet. Which means we have to evacuate the entire building.”
“Are you sure?” Geer asked sharply.
“There’s a half-dozen of the fucking things,” River answered. “At least one on the bottom has no pin.”
“Anything else?” Geer asked the question as if the situation were all their fault. “How certain are you about these grenades?”
“100 percent,” River said, with more than a hint of growl to his voice. “Thanks to Uncle Sam, I can ID pretty much any explosive or firearm there is. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time in the sandbox, where IEDs were on every other road we drove, so I’m pretty good at picking those out, too.”
Geer didn’t back down. “They could be a decoy, a ruse to slow us down.”
“None of us are equipped to investigate if it is.”
“But…” Geer began, taking a step toward the bathroom.
River made a frustrated noise at the back of his throat. “You want to play hide-and-seek in a bathroom full of fragmentation grenades, a corpse, and Dr. Frankenstein’s shooter bar, go right ahead. Just wait a minute so the rest of us have time to leave.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t nice knowing you.”
Geer’s face got so red Ava was afraid he’d have a stroke.
She cleared her throat. “Sergeant River, perhaps now is not the time to piss off one of our team members.”
“You mean, right before he blows up the whole building?” River snorted. “Oops.”
Geer didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His expression promised unhappy things in the near future. Still, he followed them, reluctance a noticeable hesitation in every step.
“The only team that guy is on is his own,” River muttered as he shoved her out the apartment door behind Palmer and the sick kid. They half-walked half-ran down the hall and stairs to the main floor.
As they moved, River shouted at Palmer. “Radio that multiple unstable explosive devices have been found in the building. A full evacuation of this dorm and the surrounding buildings needs to happen now.”
“Remember your hazard equipment,” Ava interjected.
After Palmer relayed all that, River continued with, “There’s a strong possibility of biological contamination inside one of the units. Any responders must be wearing CDC-approved safety gear.” He paused for a brief but silent moment. “Just in case you’re not clear, Ava is the CDC.”
Palmer relayed that, too. There were about two seconds of silence, and then a cacophony of voices shouted questions.
They reached the main floor hallway with way too many people yelling over Palmer’s radio.
She tried to make sense of the questions, demands, and outright yelling, but it was impossible.
A step behind her, glass shattered.
She jerked around just as the fire alarm began to blare.
“Fastest way to get everyone out,” River told her with a shrug.
He was probably right.
They went out the door, and their investigative team surrounded them.
“What happened?”
“What did you find?”
“Evidence of the infection,” she told them, raising her voice so everyone could hear her. As she finished speaking, two large vans with CDC markings pulled up.
“The CDC decontamination team has arrived. That means all of you”—Ava pointed at the police and Homeland agents around her—“need to concentrate on rounding up everyone coming out of this building. They’re going to need to be isolated until we know if they’re infected or not.”
“Did you find any evidence of Roger Squires being involved in the terrorist attacks?” One of the Homeland agents asked. Toland?
“Not specifically. We found two dead,” she told him. “I won’t speculate on cause of death.”
“We also found a bunch of unstable fragmentation grenades,” River added, because they needed to know exactly what that threat was, too.
“Unstable?” Toland asked. “What does that mean?”
“They’re rigged to explode, if moved.”
Toland looked past them. “Where’s Geer?”
Ava looked around for him, but no Geer.
“He was with us when I pulled the fire alarm,” River said, looking around also. “Son of a bitch.”
“He went back?” Ava asked, unable to imagine a reason for him to do that.
River stared at her for a moment, then he stepped up to Toland with a steely-eyed glare. “Do you guys have more than one agenda with this case?”
“Like what?” Toland answered, matching River’s scowl with one of his own. “What possible agenda could we have besides the containment of this disease and the terrorist threat?”
“Oh my God,” Ava said, staring at the Homeland agent. “The only person who answers a yes or no question with another question is a guilty person. You answered with two questions.”
“Where did you hear that? Dr. Phil?”
“Fucking spooks,” River growled. “Always think you know more than everybody else. This is no time to play politics or whatever game you’ve stuck your dicks into. We’ve got dead bodies, sick college students, and enough explosives to blow this entire building into tiny, tiny bits. If Geer isn’t very careful, he could get himself, and a lot of other people, killed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Toland proclaimed. “And we don’t have time to argue about it. We have to get this building cleared.”
River looked ready to strangle the man. Ava wanted to help, but he was right about not having time for this argument now.
But she wasn’t going to let anyone she didn’t trust get more than peripherally involved in the situation.
“Ben, over here,” she called when she saw him approaching with three other members of the decontamination team. “Can you go inside and escort people out? There are explosives, and it’s biologically hot.”
“Another hot zone?” Ben shook his head. “We’d better not have too many more of these. We’re getting stretched pretty thin.”
“I know, but this one is serious. There are two fatalities inside, and they both appear suspicious.”
Toland stepped up to Ben and gestured at his safety gear. “I need to be one of the people that goes in.”
“Sorry, son,” Ben said, despite the fact that Toland looked a solid ten years older than him. “She’s the one giving the orders, not you.” He included Ava in his reply. “They’ve started triaging people in a tent outside the ER entrance to the hospital. There’s a line.” He gave Ava a nod. “We’ll clear as many people as we can, but we might need help getting into any locked apartments.”
“I can get you in,” River said. He turned to Palmer, who still had a hold of Roger’s roommate. “Why don’t you let Agent Toland ask some questions of Mr. Squires’s roommate here?” River gave the agent a tight-lipped smile. “I’m sure a live witness might have a great deal of information of use to Homeland Security.”
Toland pointed at the kid. “He’s Roger Squires’s roommate?”
“Yep, we also found two bodies in that apartment. You might want to ask him about those, too?”
“Our conversation isn’t over,” Toland said to Ava and River.
“What is it with everyone threatening me today?” she asked River in a tired voice. “You’d think once was enough.”
“Any idiot can go through life without making enemies.” River said cheerfully. “Congratulations. It takes character and intelligence to make people want to kill you.”