Hybrid (32 page)

“When you introduced us, did you know that Avanti worked with bin Laden?” Reisch asked his former boss, temporarily changing the subject.

“I knew that you had been assigned to kill bin Laden and failed.”

“The failure was not mine. Your glorious Red Army packed it in before I could even make it to Pakistan.”

Despite the irony, both Reisch and Avanti came to accept the fact that a former Soviet operative would provide security for a Jihadists camp that had ties with bin Laden. Years later, when Avanti split from Al-Qaeda, all conflicts of interest had been resolved, and the two men developed a mutual respect. With a free hand, and an endless stream of money supplied by the Saudis, Avanti expanded the hidden laboratory beneath the camp, assembled a world-class team of virologists and microbiologists, and Jeser was born. Much smaller, and more secretive than Al-Qaeda, they shared similar goals; at least that’s what their financiers believed. Reisch knew that Avanti was no more an Islamist than he was. The Ukrainian was hardly a Muslim at all; he drank daily and frequented brothels at every opportunity. He often joked with Reisch about how the good and pious Saudi money was paying for his life of decadence. His goal was not the dissemination of the Islamic faith or the global institution of Islamic law; his goal was not nearly so noble; he simply wanted to ensure the survival of humanity by destroying the majority of humans.

“I think Avanti is correct. I don’t see the Hybrid virus being contained.” It was a rare declarative statement from Pushkin.

“In many ways you two were very similar.” Reisch said with a reminiscent undertone. “You both lived a life of excess, but never allowed it to interfere with your responsibilities. You both were well educated and at times quite profound, and you both managed to save my life.”

The Hybrid virus was born an accidental death. Even Avanti was never exactly certain how the disparate components combined to create the most lethal pathogen ever seen. It was a perfect weapon with only one flaw: it mutated as fast as any virus before it. To maintain full potency, the vials had to be kept in tissue cultures or freeze-dried, procedures that demanded expertise. On the morning of Reisch’s contamination, a lab technician accidentally shattered a vial of the agent and the desert wind did the rest. Within three days everyone in the remote camp was dead, except Reisch. Avanti had been in Tripoli debauching his way through Jeser’s funding when the sick and confused German managed to reach him by cell phone. Two days later, the German was in a Saudi isolation unit. The only thing that remained of ten years of work was three small vials of freeze-dried virus and the large tissue culture known as Klaus Reisch.

“Great minds: tragically there are so few of us,” Pushkin said and then was gone again.

Klaus pulled onto the nearly deserted highway; the GPS told him that the only way to reach New Mexico without using the interstate or state highways was to turn back east towards Colorado Springs. He followed the circuitous route of farm roads for almost an hour before he came to the small town of Mescali. He drove passed the obligatory Walmart and was noting that there was not a single car in the large parking lot when one of Mescali’s four traffic lights changed in front of him. He stood on the brakes and the Mercedes skidded a little along the slick pavement, ending up only inches from a large military truck that started to rumble through the intersection. His momentum lost, the driver glared at Reisch as he downshifted, rocking the squad of National Guardsmen in the back. In a cloud of black diesel smoke, they drove past him; after another moment, the light changed.

Reisch drove a little more slowly and carefully, using both eyes to drive. The road twisted left, and he found a second group of National Guardsmen busy erecting concrete barricades directly in his path. Behind them were two armored personnel carriers, their cannons pointed directly at Reisch. He had only an instant to react, and he wasted it staring into one of the barrels. Three armed men started waving their arms from behind the nearest barricade, signaling him to stop. It was cold, and they were wearing their winter gear, which disguised their insignias, but Reisch knew that the middle one was the man in charge. He was the youngest, most fit, and most dangerous. His mind darkened the instant he saw Reisch; it was nothing specific, more instinct. Reisch stopped twenty feet short of the barricade and glanced at his rearview mirror as the large green truck, with the sneering driver and twenty National Guardsmen, pulled up behind him.

Lieutenant John Fessner tapped on the driver’s side window as Reisch assessed the situation. His mind was uncharacteristically slow and ponderous, and with a burst of anger, he realized that he had Amanda to thank for that. He turned and found the soldier’s face just inches from him.
Concentrate
, he told himself. There were thirty-one minds focusing on him right now, and he was having trouble prioritizing them. Fessner tapped again, despite the fact that Reisch was staring at him in the eye.

Fessner was not a man to be trifled with. A combat veteran with two tours in Iraq under his belt before the age of thirty, he recognized danger when he saw it. “Can you lower your window, sir?” he shouted, his breath fogging the window, with the last word added only out habit.

Reisch searched for the switch, but it wasn’t where he thought it should be. The armrest on the door had two switches, and neither lowered the window. Instead, he accidentally hit the switch that locked the doors, and Fessner jumped back and half raised his weapon. The sudden movement of the lieutenant alerted the platoon sergeant, who eased himself and three other soldiers around the vehicle. The sergeant didn’t know what was happening, but he trusted Fessner.

Reisch found the window switches on the center armrest and finally lowered the window. “I’m sorry, officer, but you guys surprised me. I didn’t expect the army to be . . . Hey, what are you guys doing here, anyways?” Reisch spoke like a native Midwesterner; he feigned embarrassment, and then curiosity, to keep Fessner off balance.

“The road is closed, sir.” Fessner wasn’t off balance. “Can I see some ID?” He was polite, but his weapon was still poised.

“Certainly.” Reisch reached for his overcoat and retrieved his wallet and current identity. He was disappointed that Fessner hadn’t relaxed an iota in the face of his cooperative-Coloradoan act. “There you go, young man,” he continued in character.

“What’s your destination, Mr. Lyon?” Fessner’s voice was a little more confrontational.

“Denver,” Reisch answered. “I have a flight to catch.”

“Can you tell me where you are coming from?” Fessner studied the phony driver’s license as if it might have the correct answer written across Reisch’s picture.

“Manitou Springs. What’s all this about, soldier?” Courtesy wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he tried indignation.

“The State of Colorado is under martial law. There is a ban on traveling, and you are in violation of that ban.” He pocketed the driver’s license. “Please step out of the car, sir.” It was an order delivered by a man who was used to having his orders followed immediately.

Reisch hesitated. Thirty-one minds were focused on him. They clouded out anything beyond his immediate vicinity, and he wondered if it was enough cover to avoid alerting Amanda. He motioned to get out, and Fessner stepped back, his automatic weapon lowered for the moment. Reisch seized Fessner’s mind, and for a moment, he felt the usual but always strange intermixing of their thoughts. It was over in less than an instant. John Fessner dropped to his knees, grabbing his head with a howl of pain. Reisch could feel the man’s agony, but he could also feel his own resurgence. The power to kill had returned. He resisted the urge to tear Fessner’s mind apart; he needed a diversion, not a complication.

“Lieutenant, are you all right?” the sergeant screamed. Something had just happened, and he had missed it. All he saw was Fessner drop to the ground. He raised his weapon and pointed it at Reisch. The remaining twenty-nine guardsmen did the same. “Chavez, check out the LT. You!” he screamed at Reisch. “On the ground, face down, hands behind your back, now!”

“Hold up there, Sergeant. I didn’t even touch him,” Reisch said, stepping away from the Mercedes, his hands held high. He started to gather all their minds, and when he had them perfectly positioned, he felt the energy pulse leave his body. Just for a moment, he became almost weightless as the air around him suddenly compressed and then exploded outward towards the guardsmen. He watched as they flew through the air like little toy soldiers, all of them dead or dying—except for one. Reisch did a double take. Behind him stood a completely unharmed and shocked twenty-two-year-old corporal. For a long second, they stared at each other, both with the same thought:
What happened?

Reisch was the first to recover. He grabbed the mind of the corporal and started to squeeze, but not before the guardsman squeezed the trigger of his fully automatic M16.

Catherine Lee quietly pulled the curtain back and found that her patient was still asleep, and still in the emergency room.
Sixteen hours on a hospital gurney waiting for a bed
, she thought. Unfortunately, the man’s plight was not unique. The twelve-bed ER of St. Luke’s was treating, or in this case, babysitting, more than thirty. Patients were stacked everywhere. She had seen and treated more patients in the last twelve hours than in the last twelve shifts. Gunshot wounds, stabbings, and blunt trauma were supposed to be in her past. Seventeen years as an Emergency Room Attending at Grady Memorial in Atlanta had earned her the respite in sleepy Colorado Springs, but now the violence had found its way back to her doorstep. Most of the surgical patients were ultimately “turfed” to other hospitals, but only after Dr. Lee and her ER staff had stabilized them. The medical patients had to stay, no one was accepting medical transfers; every other hospital within a fifty-mile radius was as full as St. Luke’s. It was this year’s flu bug, and it had hit Colorado hard and late in the season. She had seen her first case of it ten days earlier, and it had been a nonstop parade of sick people ever since. Then, just to make matters worse, the federal government had announced a ban on travel, a medical quarantine to contain a virulent strain of TB.

The head nurse reached around her waist and spun her around. “Hey sexy, how about you give me a complete physical?” Tom Lee asked.

“Not until I get a shower and eight hours of sleep,” she replied, giving her husband a quick peck on the cheek. “Any hope of clearing out some of these patients? This guy over here has been down here for nearly two days.”

His tone changed. “Same story as yesterday—no beds anywhere. Have you talked with Dr. Branson lately?”

“Not for a week or so.” She had been so busy that she had missed all of the hospital meetings. “Why, what have you heard?”

“First, that this quarantine has nothing to do with TB.”

“Oh, there’s a big surprise,” she said, and pulled out of his embrace to let a staff nurse squeeze by them. The weak excuse of a virulent form of TB was an insult to anyone who knew better, which was pretty much everybody.

“Well, Doctor Smarty-Pants, do you know why there’s a quarantine?” He pressed himself into the wall as a patient on a gurney was wheeled down the corridor.

“No, but I’m sure our omnipotent chief of staff, who knows all, revealed the deep dark secret while you were peeing on a wall somewhere.”

She started to walk back to the nurse’s station, and he followed close behind, his voice falling to a whisper.

“Seriously, Cat, he says that it’s because of this flu bug. Apparently, a lot of people who get it are dying.”

She stopped and waited for him to catch up. “Dying? How many?” Spending all her time in the ER, she had little opportunity to keep tabs on the patients admitted through the emergency room; she would have to attend the staff meetings to get that kind of follow-up.

“About half, and it’s not just the old people.” They were back in public view, and he maintained a professional distance.

“Half! That can’t be right. We’d be up to our elbows in Health Department lookie-lous.”

“The morgue is full, and the military has been making regular trips to our loading docks, and I don’t think they’re delivering anything.”

“Damn, this is serious. I better give Dr. Branson a call. I’ll see you later.” Absently, she gave him another kiss. Ten minutes later, she was still waiting for Bob Branson to return her page.
He probably won’t answer because he thinks I want him
to shake some beds loose
, she thought while leafing through the Health Department’s notification forms. Influenza was a reportable disease, and every case they saw generated a report.

“Seventy-nine,” Cary Tees said, and Cat looked up. “Seventy-nine cases in the last . . . ” She checked her watch. “ . . . nineteen hours. Episcopal and General are both over a hundred. TB, my ass. This quarantine is about this flu, or whatever the hell it is.” Cary was from New York, and Cat occasionally enjoyed her in-your-face style, but this wasn’t one of those occasions.

“Do you have something for me, Cary?” Cat passed the stack of reports to the unit assistant.