Target Zero (An Agent Zero Spy Thriller—Book #2)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Immediately following his meeting with Bixby, Reid was ushered from CIA headquarters in Langley and directly into a waiting black sedan with Watson and Dr. Barnard. A Virginia state trooper paved their way, its lights and sirens blaring to part traffic for the pair of agents and the virologist as they headed toward the airstrip and a waiting jet.

It was oddly silent in the car, despite the screeching wails of the siren ahead of them. Reid noted that Dr. Barnard, sitting in the front passenger seat, seemed pensive yet fidgety; he knew more about the situation than the other two, and Reid did not at all like the agitated condition that the doctor appeared to be under. Beside Reid in the rear of the car, Watson sat stoically, which Reid recognized as his seeming natural state.

Reid spent the short drive from Langley to Dulles familiarizing himself with the details of the case, reviewing the encrypted drive on his phone to which Bixby had uploaded all relevant data. He quickly read over the details of the Siberian research expedition, led by a Greek virologist named Dr. Konstantin Cicero. He and his team were found dead, all five of them killed by gunshot. Their camp was burned. Four days prior, a grad student from Stockholm University named Bastien Renault had joined the expedition as an intern. The real Renault had been found murdered in his apartment near the university.

It had taken authorities a week to find the dead student. Everyone he knew assumed he was in Siberia.

Stockholm University had also confirmed that someone used Bastien Renault’s ID to gain access to their virology lab, and several pieces of equipment were stolen. The video cameras outside the lab had been disabled, so they were unable to identify a perpetrator.

Reid winced. Whoever had done this was thorough. They had planned carefully and intelligently. Even so, there were at least a few minor things that he could surmise. Whether or not they were c****s in the perpetrator’s armor, he didn’t yet know.

The car reached the tarmac and slowed as it approached the plane. The small, private airstrip was just outside of Dulles, government owned and kept secure for politicians, visiting dignitaries, and situations like this one. A white Gulfstream G650 waited for them, its ramp lowered. As soon as they were out of the car the engines slowly whirred to life.

Reid had not had a single moment alone since he had first stepped into the conference room with Cartwright; he had gone straight from there to Bixby’s lab and into the back of the waiting car, so he used the brief interim from sedan to plane to pull out his phone—the one Bixby had given him, as he had to leave his civilian cell behind—and dialed Maya’s number.

“Hello?” she answered cautiously.

“Maya, it’s Dad.”

“Dad? Why are you calling from a blocked number? And what is that noise in the background?”

“Sweetie, listen, I only have a minute and I need to tell you—”

“Oh god, you’re on a plane, aren’t you?” she interrupted.

“…About to be. Yes.” He didn’t know if the CIA would be listening in on his calls or not, so he chose his words carefully. “I… went and did the exact thing you told me I would go and do.”

Maya was silent for a long moment. “How long?”

“A couple of days at worst. It won’t be like last time,” he promised. After another long pause he asked, “How’s your sister?”

“She’s fine,” Maya said flatly. “She fell asleep in front of the TV. Should I wake her?”

“No, no. Let her sleep.”

“What should I tell her then?” Maya asked.

“Tell her, uh…” He hadn’t even had time to think up a proper alibi.

“I’ll tell her you went on a last-minute weekend getaway with Maria. She’ll buy that. She likes the idea of you getting yourself out there again.”

Reid smiled. He was grateful that Maya could think up a good excuse on the fly—so long as she didn’t try anything like that with him. “Perfect. Thank you. Mr. Thompson is going to keep an eye on you, okay?”

He expected an argument, but Maya simply said, “All right. How can I reach you if I need to?”

“I can’t give you this number, but I can text you,” he said. Chances were good that even if the CIA wasn’t monitoring calls, they would be monitoring activity—but to hell with them. He would talk to his girls if they needed him. “It’ll show up as ‘unknown,’ but at least you can message me.”

“Good,” she said. Then, quieter, she asked, “You’ll be careful, right?”

“Of course.”

Agent Watson hung his head out from the door of the Gulfstream. “Zero,” he called out, “let’s go. Wheels up in one minute.”

Reid nodded to him. To Maya he said, “I have a, uh, ‘mutual friend’ of ours with me.” He knew she would understand who he meant. Maya and Sara had spent a few days in a safe house under the watchful eye of Agent Watson.

“Be safe,” she told him. “I love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.” He ended the call, hefted his black bag, and boarded the Gulfstream. He took a seat beside Watson, across the aisle on the eight-seat, sixty-five-million-dollar aircraft. It had a max speed of nearly seven hundred miles per hour, which would put them over Europe in less than five hours’ time. As the plane began to taxi he took out his phone again and texted Maya’s number: Reply here if you need to reach me.

Two minutes later, the small jet roared into the sky.

Watson twisted halfway in his seat to address his companions. “Our first destination is Barcelona,” he told them. “Interpol has established a temporary presence there in a quarantine zone. They believe the perpetrators may still be in the country; it’s coastal, and with international travel shut down, they would need a way to get the virus out of Spain. We’re to rendezvous with Interpol and, with a little luck, gain a lead from their intel.”

Reid shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the way to go about this.” Something about the Barcelona attack felt strange to him; the target itself was seemingly random, unless the people responsible had some sort of vendetta. But since no one had claimed responsibility for the attack, he could not help thinking that Spain could very well be a red herring.

“Well, those are our orders, straight from the Secretary of Defense,” Watson retorted.

Barnard, seated behind Reid, leaned forward with interest. “What makes you say that, Agent Steele?”

Reid thought for a moment before he said, “The researchers in Siberia were expecting a specific someone.” He opened the cloud storage drive on his phone and pulled up the grad student’s profile. “Bastien Renault, twenty-five years old, medium build, of French nationality. Furthermore, the gun used at the expedition site was a MAB PA-15… a French handgun that hasn’t been in production since 1982. I believe the perpetrator, the person who took Renault’s place, is likely a Frenchman, mid-twenties or passable as such. He obviously knows enough about virology to masquerade as an intern for four days, regardless of whether or not he performed the actual mutation.”

Barnard nodded slowly, his eyebrows raised—he nearly looked impressed. “All right, Agent, Let’s say we’re looking for a young Frenchman, as young as mid-twenties, with the knowledge and skills to have mutated variola major. While that is certainly a profile, it’s also still quite a needle in a haystack.”

“Besides,” Watson added, “there’s no lead to follow or thread to pull on the virologist. Swedish law enforcement has already turned over every stone—the university, the dead student’s apartment, all of it. They’ve got nothing, which means we’ve got nothing. Barcelona is where it started; Barcelona is where we’re headed. If we do our jobs right and coordinate our efforts with Interpol, the trail will lead back to the virologist.”

Reid sighed. He thought back to that same morning, which already felt like several days ago, in the classroom at Georgetown. He suddenly sat up straight, his mind racing. “What makes you think our guy was ever in Barcelona?” he asked. “Why would he risk his own neck to release the virus?”

“Who in the hell would be willing to do it for him?” Watson asked.

“That I don’t know.” Siege of Kafa, he thought. He had just been lecturing about a similar topic. “You know, Genghis Khan was an early adopter of biological weapons—namely, the bubonic plague. He was known to send infected soldiers into native populations who refused to yield, in order to spread their illness and thin their numbers.”

Dr. Barnard scrutinized Reid. “That is true. And sometimes he would catapult their infected bodies over walls. It’s very interesting, but what do thirteenth-century Mongolian conquest tactics have to do with modern biological weapons?”

“My point is that if I was the virologist, assuming he’s the mastermind behind all this, I’d be as far away from Spain as possible. And based on what we know, I’d be willing to bet he isn’t in France, either,” Reid explained. “If I was him, I’d be in hiding. I would have sent someone else to release the virus, whether wittingly or not.”

Barnard stroked his chin stubble. “Send an infected soldier in,” he said slowly, “to spread the illness. It’s plausible—particularly with the rate of infection we’re seeing.”

“You’ve mentioned the speed of this strain a couple of times now,” Watson noted. “How fast are we talking?”

“The WHO is still working to round out a definitive profile of the virus, but…” The doctor paused to remove his glasses and clean them on his shirt. “From what they can tell so far, incubation from initial infection to symptomatic is between one and two hours. The first symptoms to manifest are headache, fever, and mild nausea, each of which compounds exponentially over the very brief life cycle of the virus. Internal temperatures are rising about one degree per hour. Then acute tussis begins, or coughing from fluid in the lungs. All bleeding is internal; there are no external sores as seen in traditional smallpox cases and variola minor.

“From what they’re seeing in Spain, it’s typically the lungs that bleed first, making it difficult to breathe. That, in conjunction with high fever, has been commonly causing unconsciousness or at least disorientation. Bleeding of other internal regions is next, generally the abdominal cavity, and eventually internal hemorrhaging until death.”

Reid closed his eyes as the doctor spoke. He had no desire to see any of that for himself, not after the description and seeing Barnard’s slackened features. “How long does it take?”

“The WHO’s current profile of the virus is an average of seven to eight hours from infection to mortem.”

Reid’s stomach turned at the thought. He couldn’t imagine how horrifying it would be to fall sick in the morning and be dead before sundown—without any hope for a cure.

All three of their phones chimed simultaneously. Watson checked his. “An update,” he announced. “Assistant Director Riker says Interpol’s got something. Whatever it is must be sensitive. They won’t upload it to us for fear of a leak, but they’re saying it’s urgent.”

Reid almost scoffed. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Spain felt like a ploy, a way to throw the authorities off the scent, but it didn’t matter now; Barcelona was where they were headed. And even though he thought it could be a waste of time, time that they could be spending tracking the virologist, he was morbidly curious about what Interpol had discovered.

Dr. Barnard sighed deeply, trying to contain the anxiety that was clearly scrawled across his face and brow. “Ground zero,” he murmured. “Let us hope to whomever you pray to that we won’t have to one day say, ‘Where it all began.’”