Oath of Office. Jack Mars

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “I left my son staring at a striped bass on the grill tonight, a striper that we caught together. I could start my retirement from all this right now. I kind of enjoyed being a college professor. I’m looking forward to getting back to it. And I’m looking forward to watching my son grow up.”

      Luke stared at Monk and Susan. They stared back at him.

      “So?” he said. “What do you think?”

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      June 11th

      2:15 a.m.

      Ybor City, Tampa, Florida

      It was dangerous work.

      So dangerous that he did not like to go out to the laboratory floor at all.

      “Yes, yes,” he said into the telephone. “We have four people on right now. We will have six when the shift turns over. By tonight? It’s possible. I don’t want to promise too much. Call me around ten a.m., and I will have a better idea.”

      He listened for a moment. “Well, I would say a van would be big enough. That size can easily pull back to the loading dock. These things are smaller than the eye can see. Even trillions of them don’t take up that much space. If we had to do it, we might be able to fit it all in the trunk of a car. But if so, I would suggest two cars. One to go on the road, and one to go to the airport.”

      He hung up the phone. The man’s code name was Adam. The first man, because he was the first man hired for this job. He fully understood the risks, even if the others did not. He alone knew the entire scope of the project.

      He watched the floor of the small warehouse through the big office window. They were working around the clock in three shifts. The people in there now, three men and a woman, wore white laboratory gowns, goggles, ventilator masks, rubber gloves, and booties on their feet.

      The workers had been selected for their ability to do simple microbiology. Their job was to grow and multiply a virus using the food medium Adam supplied, then freeze-dry the samples for later transport and aerosol transmission. It was tedious work, but not difficult. Any laboratory assistant or second year biochemistry student could do it.

      The twenty-four-hour schedule meant that the stockpiles of freeze-dried virus were growing very quickly. Adam gave a report to his employers every six or eight hours, and they always expressed their pleasure with the pace. In the past day, their pleasure had begun to give way to delight. The work would soon be complete, perhaps as early as today.

      Adam smiled at that. His employers were well-pleased, and they were paying him very, very well.

      He sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup and continued to watch the workers. He had lost count of the amount of coffee he had consumed in the past few days. It was a lot. The days were beginning to blur together. When he became exhausted, he would lie down on the cot in his office and sleep for a little while. He wore the same protective gear as the workers out in the lab. He hadn’t taken it off now in two and a half days.

      Adam had done his best to build a makeshift laboratory in the rented warehouse. He had done his best to protect the workers and himself. They had protective clothing to wear. There was a room in which to discard the clothing after each shift, and there were showers for the workers to wash off any residue afterward.

      But there were also funding and time constraints to consider. The schedule was fast, and of course there was the question of secrecy. He knew the protections were not up to the standards of the American Centers for Disease Control – if he’d had a million dollars and six months to build this place, it still wouldn’t be enough.

      In the end, he had built the lab in less than two weeks. It was located in a rugged district of old, low-slung warehouses, deep inside a neighborhood that had long been a center of Cuban and other immigration to the United States.

      No one would look at the place twice. There was no sign on the building, and it was elbow-to-elbow with a dozen similar buildings. The lease was paid for the next six months, even though they only needed the facility for a very short time. It had its own small parking lot, and the workers came and went like warehouse and factory workers everywhere – in eight-hour intervals.

      The workers were well-paid in cash, and few of them spoke any English. The workers knew what to do with the virus, but they didn’t know exactly what they were handling or why. A police raid was unlikely.

      Still, it made him nervous to be so close to the virus. He would be relieved to finish this part of the job, receive his final payment, and then evacuate this place as if he had never been here. After that, he would take a flight to the west coast. For Adam, there were two parts to this job. One here, and one… somewhere else.

      And the first part would be done soon.

      Today? Yes, perhaps even as early as today.

      He would leave the country for a while, he had decided. After all of this was over, he would take a nice long holiday. The south coast of France sounded nice to him right now. With the money he was making, he could go anywhere he liked.

      It was simple. A van, or a car, or perhaps two cars would pull into the yard. Adam would close the gates so nobody on the street could see what was happening. His workers would take a few moments loading the materials into the vehicles. He would make sure they were careful, so maybe the whole thing would require twenty minutes.

      Adam smiled to himself. Soon after the loading was done, he would be on a plane to the west coast. Soon after that, the nightmare would begin. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      5:40 a.m.

      The Skies Over West Virginia

      The six-seat Learjet shrieked across the early morning sky. The jet was dark blue with the Secret Service seal on the side. Behind it, a sliver of the rising sun just poked above the clouds.

      Luke and his team used the front four passenger seats as their meeting area. They stowed their luggage, and their gear, in the seats at the back.

      He had the team back together. In the seat next to him sat big Ed Newsam, in khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He had a pair of crutches tucked to the side of his seat, just under the window.

      Across from Luke and to the left, facing him, was Mark Swann. He was tall and thin, with sandy hair and glasses. He stretched his long legs out into the aisle. He wore an old pair of ripped jeans and a pair of red Chuck Taylor sneakers. He had been liberated from duty as a pedophile decoy, and he looked like he couldn’t be much more pleased than he was.

      Directly across from Luke sat Trudy Wellington. She had curly brown hair, was slim and attractive in a green sweater and slacks. She wore big round glasses on her face. She was very pretty, but the glasses made her look almost like an owl.

      Luke felt okay, not great. He had called Becca before they left. The conversation hadn’t gone well. It had barely gone at all.

      “Where are you going?” she said.

      “Texas. Galveston. There’s been a security breach at a lab there.”

      “The BSL-4 lab?” she said. Becca was herself a cancer researcher. She had been working on a cure for melanoma for some СКАЧАТЬ