Target Zero. Джек Марс

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СКАЧАТЬ absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. I must go now, Cicero, and so must you. But I respect you, and I am willing to grant a final request. Is there anything you would like to say to your Phoebe? You have my word I will deliver the message.”

      Cicero shook his head slowly. “There is nothing so important to tell her that I would send a monster like you into her path.”

      “Very well. Goodbye, Doctor.” Cheval raised the PA-15 and fired a single round into Cicero’s forehead. The wound frothed as the older doctor staggered and collapsed onto the tundra.

      In the stunning silence that followed, Cheval took a moment and, kneeling, murmured a brief prayer. Then he set about his work.

      He wiped the gun clean of prints and powder and hurled it into the flowing, icy Kolyma River. Next he rolled the four bodies into the hole to join Dr. Scott. With a shovel and pick, he spent ninety minutes covering them and the exposed, decomposing arm with partially frozen dirt. He disassembled the excavation site, pulling out the stakes and tearing down the procedural tape. He took his time, working meticulously—no one would even attempt to contact the research team for another eight to twelve hours, and it would be at least a full twenty-four before the WHO sent anyone to the site. An investigation would certainly yield the buried bodies, but Cheval was not keen to make it easy on them.

      Lastly, he took the glass vials containing the samples from the decomposing arm and carefully slid them, one by one, into the secure foam tubes of the stainless steel box, all the while keenly aware that any single one of them had the power to be staggeringly deadly. Then he sealed the four clasps and carried the samples back to the encampment.

      In the makeshift clean room, Cheval stepped into the portable decontamination shower. Six nozzles sprayed him down from every angle with steaming hot water and a built-in emulsifier. Once finished, he carefully and methodically peeled off the yellow hazmat suit, leaving it on the floor of the tent. It was possible that his hairs or spittle, identifying factors, could be in the suit—but he had one last step to perform.

      In the back of Cicero’s all-terrain jeep were two rectangular red gasoline canisters. It would take only one for him to reach civilization again. The other he dumped liberally over the clean room, the four neoprene tents, and the canvas canopy.

      Then he lit the fire. The blaze went up quickly and instantly, sending black, oily smoke roiling skyward. Cheval climbed into the jeep with the steel sample box and drove away. He did not speed, and he did not look in the rearview mirror to watch the site burn. He took his time.

      Imam Khalil would be waiting. But the young Frenchman still had much to do before the virus was ready.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Reid Lawson peered through the blinds of his home office for the tenth time in less than two minutes. He was growing anxious; the bus should have arrived by now.

      His office was on the second floor, the smallest of the three bedrooms of their new home on Spruce Street in Alexandria, Virginia. It was a welcome contrast to the cramped, boxy closet of a study he had in the Bronx. Half of his things were unpacked; the rest were still in boxes that lay scattered across the room. His bookshelves were constructed, but his books lay stacked in alphabetical order on the floor. The only things he had taken the time to completely build and organize were his desk and computer.

      Reid had told himself that today was going to be the day that he finally got it together, nearly a full month after moving in, and finished unpacking the office.

      He had gotten as far as opening a box. It was a start.

      The bus is never late, he thought. It’s always here between three twenty-three and three twenty-five. It’s three thirty-one.

      I’m calling them.

      He snatched his cell phone from the desk and dialed Maya’s number. He paced as it rang, trying not to think of all the awful things that could have happened to his girls between the school and home.

      The call went to voicemail.

      Reid hurried down the stairs to the foyer and pulled on a light jacket; March in Virginia was considerably more favorable than New York, but still a bit chilly. Car keys in hand, he punched in the four-digit security code on the wall panel to arm the alarm system to “away” mode. He knew the precise route the bus took; he could backtrack it all the way to the high school if he needed to, and…

      As soon as he pulled the front door open, the bright yellow bus hissed to a stop at the end of his driveway.

      “Busted,” Reid murmured. He couldn’t very well duck back into the house. He had undoubtedly been spotted. His two teenage girls stepped off the bus and down the walkway, pausing just shy of the door that he now blocked as the bus pulled away again.

      “Hi, girls,” he said as brightly as possible. “How was school?”

      His eldest, Maya, shot him a suspicious look as she folded her arms across her chest. “Where you going?”

      “Um… to get the mail,” he told her.

      “With your car keys?” She gestured to his fist, which was indeed gripping the keys to his silver SUV. “Try again.”

      Yup, he thought. Busted. “The bus was late. And you know what I said, if you’re going to be late, you have to call. And why didn’t you answer your phone? I tried to call—”

      “Six minutes, Dad.” Maya shook her head. “Six minutes isn’t ‘late.’ Six minutes is traffic. There was a fender-bender on Vine.”

      He stepped aside as they entered the house. His younger daughter, Sara, gave him a brief hug and a murmur of, “Hi, Daddy.”

      “Hi, sweetheart.” Reid closed the door behind them, locked it, and punched in the code to the alarm system again before turning back to Maya. “Traffic or not, I want you to let me know when you’re going to be late.”

      “You’re neurotic,” she muttered.

      “Excuse me?” Reid blinked in surprise. “You seem to be confusing neurosis with concern.”

      “Oh, please,” Maya retorted. “You haven’t let us out of your sight in weeks. Not since you’ve been back.”

      She was, as usual, right. Reid had always been a protective father, and he had grown more so when his wife and their mother, Kate, died two years earlier. But for the past four weeks, he had become a veritable helicopter parent, hovering and (if he was being honest) perhaps being a tad overbearing.

      But he wasn’t about to admit that.

      “My dear, sweet child,” he chided, “as you blossom into adulthood, you’ll have to learn a very hard truth—that sometimes, you are wrong. And right now, you are wrong.” He grinned, but she didn’t. It was in his nature to try to diffuse tension with his kids using humor, but Maya wasn’t having it.

      “Whatever.” She marched down the foyer and into the kitchen. She was sixteen, and staggeringly intelligent for her age—sometimes, it seemed, too much so for her own good. She had Reid’s dark hair and penchant for dramatic discourse, but lately she seemed to have gained a proclivity toward teenage angst, or at the very least moodiness… likely brought on by a combination of Reid’s constant loitering and obvious misinformation about the events that had occurred the month before.

      Sara, the younger СКАЧАТЬ