Once Burned, Twice Spy Page 10

  “Ya wanna escort me, then, Grandin?” he inquired quietly.

  Menace lurked in the innocuous words, and a chilly shiver trickled down my backbone.

  “Sure.” Grandin gave him a cocky grin and strode forward.

  Just before he reached the door, Hellhound let it swing shut. The lock engaged with an uncompromising click.

  Grandin glared, but Hellhound remained poker-faced as he stepped aside and assumed parade rest beside the door. “Protocol,” he said neutrally. “Ya hafta clear the retinal scan to go in. No exceptions.”

  Grandin gave him another dirty look and stepped past Hellhound’s monumental bulk to the scanner, intentionally jostling him on the way by.

  I added another note to my imaginary files: Grandin had a bad case of Small-Dick Syndrome.

  The lock clicked anticlimactically open, and Grandin shot Hellhound a triumphant look before taking up a challenging crossed-arm stance in the doorway, holding the door open with his body so that Hellhound had to go past him to access the weapons.

  His arrogant symbolism wasn’t lost on me. I mentally boosted his Asshole Index a couple more points.

  Hellhound stepped through the door without touching him and Grandin’s smug expression slipped, as though he had been hoping for a confrontation.

  When Hellhound emerged carrying his two duffel bags, he stopped outside the door and pointedly waited for Grandin to step aside and let the door close. Then he strode to the front of the room and laid the bags on the table beside Reggie.

  “Thank you,” Reggie said with considerably more graciousness than he usually displayed. “Please lay out the weapons.”

  I spared a moment of surprise at his unwarranted good manners before cynically realizing that he was only concealing the fact that he couldn’t manage the zippers easily with his prosthetic hand.

  Still expressionless, Hellhound complied before fading back a couple of steps. He took up parade rest again, his hulking form providing an ominous backdrop to Reggie’s presentation.

  “So,” Reggie said. “Here we have two weapons. This…” He picked up the bottle-shaped one first. “…is the lethal version Agent Kelly captured last year; and the one that we believed to be part of the terrorist threat last month.”

  A few heads turned briefly my way. Nora Taylor and Brad Wilson eyed me a little longer, but their attention swivelled guiltily back to Reggie when I met their gazes.

  “As you know, ultrasound is used in many applications from healthcare to industrial testing,” Reggie went on, his polished delivery an amusing contrast to his usual expletive-laden conversation. “But ultrasound’s fundamental characteristics cause its waves to diverge and disperse rapidly, which severely limits its effective range…”

  I studied the silent audience while he delivered his presentation. Nobody moved. All gazes were riveted to the front of the room. Katie’s eyes were alight, her lips parted as though viewing some extraordinary work of art. I was pretty sure she wasn’t admiring the weapon.

  Looking everywhere except at the area where Katie sat, Reggie concluded, “…Beyond eight metres, the tissue damage decreases on an exponential curve so the effects may or may not be lethal between eight and nine metres. At nine metres, or twenty-nine and a half feet, no tissue damage was observed in any of our tests.”

  He placed the weapon back on the table and the room erupted in a babble of questions. Most of them seemed to be variations on ‘how did you test it’ and ‘how did you get it’, and Reggie held up a quelling hand.

  “We lab-tested the effective range by using pig carcasses to simulate adult humans and then evaluating the subsequent tissue damage. Our only documentation of its use on human subjects comes from Agent Kelly.” He turned to me. “Aydan, would you please describe its effects?”

  Frozen in the stare of thirty-some pairs of eyes, I mentally cursed Reggie. That’s why he had requested me, the bastard. Dammit, I knew he had some agenda.

  “Come on, Kelly,” Grandin prompted. “Cat got your tongue?”

  I sneezed into the crook of my elbow. The sneeze came out sounding a lot like ‘asshole’, and Hellhound snickered.

  “’Scuse me,” I said with a fake smile. “As Reggie said, its effects were instantaneous.” My throat constricted at the memory of a handsome young man collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut. “It was as fast as pointing a finger,” I added hoarsely. “No warning, no sound, no escape. Just… smiling and talking one instant, and the next instant dead. Before his body even hit the floor.” I swallowed, the sound clearly audible in the silence that had swelled into the room.

  Then Grandin spoke up again. “So how and when did you get it?”

  I gave him a level look. “Classified.”

  A few more people asked variations of the same questions, but I provided no more details and they soon gave up. Reggie fielded some more technical questions before stepping back from the table.

  Taking that as his cue, Hellhound stowed the weapons in their duffels again and carried them back to the weapons lockup.

  Grandin forestalled him by stepping up to the retinal scan. When the door opened for him, he immediately closed it again before stepping aside to allow Hellhound access to the scanner.

  Hellhound took his turn and opened the door, holding it for Grandin without expression.

  A few moments later they both emerged empty-handed, and Hellhound took up parade rest beside the door again while Grandin meandered away, looking just a little too casual.

  Reggie had been addressing the last of the questions while I watched the little exchange at the weapons lockup, and I tuned back into his words as he finished, “…and I’ll turn the floor over to Brad Wilson from the United States.”

  Reggie strode back to take a seat in the audience as Wilson stepped up. While the audience turned their attention to the front of the room Reggie sank into his chair with a grimace of pain, quickly hidden.

  Wilson flashed a mouthful of too-white teeth in a shit-eating grin that made me glance around the room in case there was a gallery of television reporters that I had somehow failed to notice.

  “Thank you,” Wilson said, projecting his voice like an orator addressing a crowd of thousands. “I can’t tell you how honoured I am to be here today, leading the world with cutting-edge technology along with our closest allies…”

  His grandiose words faded from my attention as Grandin sidled over to stand beside me, still looking nonchalant.

  I turned to give him a flat stare.

  He ignored me, focusing on Wilson as though they were the only two people in the room.

  What the hell was he up to?

  I held my ground and kept my expression neutral despite the squirmy desire to move away. Grandin was the kind of guy who encroached on my personal space from the other side of the room. Arms-length was far too close.

  Wilson was still oozing pompous hyperbole, and I skimmed another glance across the crowd. Most faces wore the blank mask of boredom disguised as polite interest, but Nora Taylor was watching me again. So was Dirk, the FBI agent.

  As soon as I looked at each of them, they transferred their gazes; Nora’s returning to Wilson at the front of the room and Dirk’s flitting to Grandin beside me.

  Dammit, this was really starting to creep me out.

  Wilson was still flapping his gums, but it sounded as though he was winding down at last. “…so without further ado…” He beamed another media-worthy grin at the audience. “…I’ll transfer you to the very capable hands of the best weapons research team in the world! Let’s give them a hand!” His blinding smile could probably be seen from outer space, and he raised his hands high to clap like a groupie at a rock concert.

  According to the briefing Reggie had given me the previous evening, Wilson’s superlatives were an exaggeration and consequently an insult to the other countries’ teams; but nevertheless a smattering of courteous applause welcomed the two U.S. scientists as they approached the front.

  “
For those who don’t already know me, I’m Dr. Joseph Mitchell,” the taller scientist said in a twangy Midwest accent. “And this is Dr. Jason Pino.” He indicated his short roly-poly companion. “Unlike Dr. Chow’s anti-personnel focus, we’ve been concentrating on infrastructure. Cripple an enemy’s weapons and infrastructure, and they’re done. The rest is just mop-up.”

  As if to emphasize his words, Pino mopped his sweaty brow with a white handkerchief. As he returned it to his pocket he furtively wiped his palms on it, too.

  Grandin made a slight movement beside me and my attention snapped to him, but his gaze was focused on the scientists.

  Uneasiness prickled the back of my neck as I looked toward the front again, keeping Grandin in my peripheral vision as much as possible. They were up to something; I just knew it.

  But what?

  My fingers itched to draw my Glock, and I drew a slow breath. In. Out.

  These are our allies. Settle down.

  “We’ve arranged a little demo for you,” the taller scientist went on. “Costas, if you would bring it, please…?”

  I knew from Reggie’s briefing that Costas was Hellhound’s Weapons Specialist counterpart from the U.S. Even though Grandin had been the one to challenge Hellhound earlier, apparently only Costas was entrusted with handling their weapons.

  Costas detached himself from the wall, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and café-au-lait skin. As he approached the door to the weapons lockup, he motioned graciously to Hellhound, who bent for the retinal scan again. Costas repeated the process, and Hellhound held the door for him.

  With a ‘thank you’, Costas ducked into the room and returned a moment later bearing a glass cube that looked like a small aquarium. He carried it gingerly to the front and placed it on the table with exaggerated care, as though it might explode if it was jolted.

  Along with everyone else, I strained my eyes to identify the aquarium’s contents. It looked like a couple of pieces of ordinary construction rebar propped across some low supports. There was also a small glass vial balanced on a fragile-looking tripod.

  The Midwest scientist smiled, obviously relishing the attentiveness of his audience. “We’ve developed bacteria…” he began, but the rest of his sentence was lost in a sudden stir and swell of voices from the crowd.

  I studied my team for a clue to the uproar. Reggie was expressionless as always but his shoulders had tensed and his good hand had clenched into a fist. Murray and Melinda looked horrified.

  “Hold up!” Katie’s clear Aussie accent cut through the babble as she bounced to her feet, frowning. “The UN’s Convention on Biological Weapons is very clear about prohibition of the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological weapons. What you’re doing is-”

  “Completely acceptable,” Mitchell interrupted, reclaiming the attention of the agitated crowd. “This is a common bacterium that lives everywhere in nature. It’s completely harmless to humans, birds, fish, mammals; any living thing. You could bathe in the petri dish; heck, you could drink it or snort it into your mucous membranes and you wouldn’t get so much as an upset stomach or a sniffle. This is not a biological weapon as defined by the BWC.”

  Katie sank back into her chair, still frowning.

  “As I said before,” Mitchell went on, “We’re focusing on infrastructure. And we’ve engineered this particular bacterium…” He patted the glass cube smugly. “…to excrete a substance that alters the electron charge in metallic molecules. That means we can reduce any metal or metallic alloy, whether interstitial or substitutional, to its constituent elements at the molecular level.” His smile widened as hubbub rose again, and he pitched his voice louder to be heard. “The process takes mere seconds, and the bacteria are virtually unstoppable until the molecular deconstruction process is complete. Watch.”

  He activated a lever on the side of the glass box, and the vial inside toppled off its tripod and shattered.

  All babble instantly ceased. The silence was so profound that I could hear my own breath whistling through my nostrils. Beside me, Grandin scribbled feverishly in a small notebook he’d withdrawn from his pocket.

  A minute later the rebar inside the glass cube collapsed into a heap of gray powder.

  “Are you insane?” Melinda’s voice snapped out like a whip. “If that containment vessel is breached, your bacteria will consume all the rebar in this building! And the next building, and the next, until nothing is left of this city but rubble!”

  Chapter 13

  My breath stopped.

  All those tons of concrete overhead. No rebar to support it.

  We’d be crushed.

  Claustrophobic panic seized my throat. Trapped-trapped-have-to-get-out-NOW…

  “That wouldn’t happen unless we applied it directly to the rebar in an exposed location, where it could travel throughout the building’s structure,” Mitchell said. “It can’t be deployed by an airborne vector.”

  I ventured a shallow breath, all my attention riveted on his words. Words of reassurance that I desperately needed to hear…

  “It doesn’t need to be airborne to be a threat!” Melinda snapped. “Look around you! How many metals do you see? Everything is a potential vector if your bacteria escape! The light fixture above you. The electrical plugin under the table has metallic components. Its wires are interconnected throughout the building. Wiring, steel studs, metal handrails, bolts; who knows what might touch the rebar? It would only need one access point to destroy the whole building!”

  My head swam and I realized I was hyperventilating. Focusing all my will, I slowed my breathing.

  In… two… three… four.

  Out… two… three… four.

  Slow like ocean waves…

  “That would be extremely unlikely,” Mitchell argued. “The bacteria would have to be physically applied to the plug-in, and even so, electrical components are always isolated from steel structure. And even if this containment vessel broke right now, the bacteria’s lifespan is measured in minutes once any available metallic bonds have been consumed. In the time we’ve taken to argue about it, everything inside this containment vessel has become completely inert…”

  Something jabbed my arm and I let out an involuntary yelp and twitched violently.

  A small object skittered across the floor toward the front of the room. An instant later heavy smoke belched from it.

  “Shit!” My expletive rang out in the momentary silence.

  Don’t waste breath.

  I sucked in a lungful of rapidly diminishing clean air and dove toward my scientists. Flinging my duffel bag onto the nearest chair, I ransacked it. “Here!” I shoved self-adhesive breathing masks at Melinda, Murray, and Reggie, then slapped one over my own nose and mouth.

  Reggie’s useless left hand fumbled with the mask, and I snatched it out of his grasp and peeled off the backing for him. As Reggie grabbed the mask and stuck it on his face, Hellhound loomed up out of the smoke, coughing.

  A self-adhesive mask wouldn’t seal over his beard and moustache, dammit. I snatched a pair of nasal filters out of my bag and thrust them at him. “Up your nose!” I barked.

  He obeyed with alacrity, pressing his lips together to force himself to breathe through the filters.

  God, what if he couldn’t get enough air? His nose had been broken so many times…

  The sprinkler system deployed, drenching us in icy water. Coughing and cries of fear filled the air, interspersed with sharp commands from the agents as bodies milled through the smoke, stumbling and bumping into us.

  Move.

  With my Glock drawn even though I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me, I herded my group through the murk toward where I thought the door should be. My breathing mask plastered itself against my nose and mouth with every rapid inhalation, intensifying my panicky trapped sensation.

  Just as we reached the door, a deep rumbling galvanized my already pounding heart.

  Was that the sound of concret
e collapsing?

  I was shoving my team forward when I realized the smoke was thinning. The rumble came from powerful concealed fans sucking out the contaminated air.

  “The door’s locked!” Murray’s voice rose in fear as he grappled with the door handle.

  “It’s just the emergency lockdown,” Hellhound said loudly, his powerful voice rising over the frightened babble around us. “Standard protocol, nothin’ to worry about. Security’ll be here in a minute to sort it out. Everybody stay calm.”

  I sucked in a deep shaky breath and forced my voice as loud and steady as I could manage. “Arnie’s right; don’t worry. We’re fine in here. All areas in the building have a separate fire suppression system and their own air supply.”

  Knowing about the safety features of the building didn’t make me feel any better. We were still trapped in here. And if I didn’t get this mask off my face soon I was going to hyperventilate and pass out…

  “It’s gone!” A frantic cry in a Midwest twang accelerated my heart rate to near-coronary levels all over again. “Somebody stole my bacteria!”

  Everyone whirled to stare through the last wisps of smoke. The lid of the glass containment vessel lay on the table, and only a few smudges of grey powder remained inside.

  Suddenly I didn’t hate my breathing mask quite so much.

  Dirk and Grandin glared around the room, gripping their pistols. Grandin’s knuckles whitened on his gun as he caught sight of the Glock in my hand.

  Ian’s hand hovered over his holster as his gaze flicked between us, and the Aussie and Kiwi agents looked twitchy, too.

  Shit, this could go bad really fast.

  Keeping my Glock pointed at the floor, I spoke in my loudest, most authoritative voice. “Okay, everybody calm down.” I slowly tucked my gun back into my waist holster. No sudden moves. “Let’s all put our weapons away. There’s no immediate threat here, and security will sort this out in a few minutes. Just stay calm.”

  I shot a hard look at Dirk and Grandin. Dirk reluctantly holstered his weapon. Grandin just glared, his gun not quite pointing at me, but not exactly pointing at the floor, either.