“You should try to stay calm,” Reed continued. “You heard me talking to mission control. They know everyone’s dead. They have no clue what happened up here. And they never will.”
Reed wet his lips. “Discovery has become a kind of Marie Celeste, a doomed ghost ship. Of course, there are differences. I’m still alive and so are you— for the time being. NASA can and will bring the orbiter down on autopilot. As long as I’m alive, they’re not going to push the autodestruct button.”
Reed let a beat go by. “They won’t have to.”
Megan felt hot tears spill over her cheeks. She was faintly aware that she was screaming but that had no impact on Reed. His expression remained as cold and remote as arctic ice.
“I wish it were someone other than you, Megan,” he was saying. “Really I do. But Treloar had to be eliminated and you were his backup. Now, I don’t expect you to understand. But since I was the one who brought you into the program and gave you this chance, I feel I owe you an explanation. You see, we need to keep our bioweapons’ arsenal strong. All those treaties we signed— do you think places like Iraq, Libya, or North Korea give a damn about them? Of course not. They’re too busy developing their own weapons. Well, now we’ll have something that will trump whatever they come up with. And we’ll be the only ones to have it.
“The sample I made? A thimbleful is enough to eradicate any country we choose. I realize that’s not a very scientific measurement, but you get my drift. If you don’t believe me, look at what happened here, how quickly the smallpox went to work, the consequences…”
Never in her life had Megan felt so powerless. Reed’s voice droned in her ears like something from a nightmare. She could not believe such words coming from a man she had thought she knew, a colleague, a mentor, someone she’d trusted implicitly.
He’s insane. That’s all I need to know. And what I need to do is get out of here!
When Reed spoke again, it was as though he’d read her mind.
“You’ve done most of my job for me, Megan, locking yourself in like that. The fire will do the rest. I didn’t mention that? Well, there’s going to be an awful lot of confusion when this thing lands. The only thing on mission control’s mind will be to get me out of here safely. After that, if something explodes, well…” He shrugged. “You’ve been a part of history, Megan. I’ll never forget you— or the others.”
His eyes never left hers as he touched a panel on his commo unit. “Mission director, this is Reed. Do you copy?”
She heard Landon’s voice: “Copy, Dylan.”
“I have an update. I… I found Megan. She’s dead… like the others.”
There was a moment’s silence on the other end. “I copy, Dylan. I’m so sorry. Listen, we’re working to bring you home. Can you get to the flight deck?”
“Affirmative.”
“We won’t need any help, but if something goes wrong…”
“Understood. Harry?”
“Yes?”
“You’ve opened the Black Book, right?”
“Yes, Dylan.”
“There’s a name that’s not in there. Dr. Karl Bauer. He knows more about bugs than anyone alive. I think you might want to consult with him about the quarantine.”
“Roger that. We’ll get Bauer to the landing site. We’re running emergency descent models right now. As soon as we have a firm trajectory, we’ll let you know.”
Reed smiled faintly and, looking directly at Megan, said, “Roger, mission director. Discovery, signing off.”
___________________
CHAPTER
TWENTY FIVE
___________________
The helicopter ferrying Jon Smith from Camp David landed in the cargo transport area of Andrews Air Force Base. Smith hopped out and trotted across the tarmac to the white panel truck parked next to a sleek executive jet.
“Hello, Jon,” Major-General Kirov said, watching the corpsmen pull a stretcher out of the truck.
“Did everything go as planned?” Smith asked.
“It did,” Kirov replied. “These men” —he indicated the corpsmen— “arrived at your house exactly on schedule. They were very quick, very efficient.”
Smith glanced at Ivan Beria, a blanket tucked up to his chin, as he was wheeled by.
“Is he all right?”
“The tranquilizers worked perfectly,” Kirov replied.
Smith nodded.
As the stretcher disappeared into the jet, Kirov turned to Smith. “I am grateful to you— and to Mr. Klein— for allowing me to help. I only wish I could do more.”
Smith shook the Russian’s hand. “I’ll stay in touch, General. I think we got everything we could out of Beria, but if he says anything interesting…”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Kirov assured him. “Good-bye, Jon Smith. I hope that we will meet again, under more pleasant circumstances.”
Smith waited until Kirov was onboard and the hatch was closed. By the time the jet was racing down the runway he was in his car, being waved through perimeter security. As he headed for the highway, his thoughts drifted from what had been accomplished to what was still left to do.
__________
In Moscow it was the middle of the night, but the lights were still burning in the offices of the Bay Digital Corporation.
In the conference room, Randi Russell was working on her fourth cup of coffee, watching Sasha Rublev as he worked to ferret out the secrets of the laptop Jon Smith had delivered. Surrounded by hardware wired into the laptop, Sasha had been at his keyboard for over seven hours, downing the occasional Coke to maintain his energy level. Three times Randi had suggested they quit for the night, but each time Sasha simply waved her words away.
“I’m close,” he would mumble. “Just a few more minutes.”
By now Randi had decided that Sasha did not measure time like mere mortals.
She drained her coffee, stared at the dregs, and then said: “Okay, that’s it. And this time I mean it.”
Sasha held up one hand, kept typing with the other. “Wait for it…”
He jabbed a key triumphantly and slumped in his chair. “Look,” he said proudly.
Randi couldn’t believe her eyes. The big monitor, which had been filled with nothing but a series of unintelligible symbols all evening, suddenly morphed into a string of deciphered E-mails.
“Sasha, how—?” Randi shook her head. “Never mind. I’d never understand.”
Sasha beamed at her. “The person this computer belongs to used CARNIVORE, your FBI’s latest encryption program.” He looked at her shrewdly. “I thought no one outside America had this.”
“Me too,” Randi murmured.
Using the mouse, she scanned the E-mails, unable to believe what she was reading.
What the hell is the Cassandra Compact?
__________
Returning to Bethesda, Jon Smith fixed himself a quick snack and took it into his study. The faint odor of drugs and a broken man’s fear hung in the house. Smith opened a window and sat down with the files Nathaniel Klein had given him.
Travis Nichols and Patrick Drake… both U.S. Army sergeants. Both from the same small town in central Texas where young men went either into the oil fields or the military. Seasoned combat veterans, they had seen action in Somalia, the Gulf, and most recently, Nigeria.
Smith’s interest was piqued when he read their fitness reports from the Advanced Warfare School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Nichols and Drake had graduated one and two in their class, cold, hard men whose keen edge had been further honed by instructors in the blackest combat arts.
Then they disappear…
Now Smith knew what Klein had meant about the lapses. In each of the last five years there were months where the soldiers’ whereabouts could not be accounted for. No notations had been made by commanding officers; no ship-out or transport orders were available.
Experienced in the ways of the military, Smith could guess where Nichols and Drake had disappeared. Scattered throughout the army were special units. The most public of these were the Rangers. But there were others, whose members were culled from the most experienced and battle-hardened troops. In Vietnam, they had been known as LRRPs-Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols; in other parts of the world, they had no designation whatsoever.
Smith was aware of three such outfits but suspected there were more. He knew no one in any of them, and didn’t have the time or the resources to start a hunt from scratch. There was only one way to go: with the phone number that Peter Howell had coaxed from the dying Travis Nichols’s lips.
For the next hour, Smith considered one plan of action after another. From each one he took away a detail or two that, when strung together, formed a coherent whole. Then he went over it again and again, probing for weaknesses, eliminating questions, trying to give himself the best possible advantage. He knew that the minute he made the call to that as yet unknown person at the other end of a number that didn’t exist, his life would hang on his every word and action.