The Devil's Pitchfork (10 page)

Derek turned away from the bar to stare at Davis. “You remember.”

“Hell yes, I remember. I’ve always wondered when something about this guy was going to come up. Now it has.”

“Why do you remember?”

“Huh. Well, one, he was the only one I’ve ever run into. It’s not every day you get a patient exposed to biological and chemical warfare agents. The others I saw in Iraq were in a morgue and they were usually Iraqi. Dead from being caught near their own shit when we dropped a 500-pound bomb on their heads. So do I remember Coffee? Yeah, you bet.” He nodded to someone who walked by.

“Is that why you thought the subject would come up someday?”

“Huh? Oh, the BCW exposure? No. Just that there was some serious weirdness there. I mean, I was off-shift when he died, but I wasn’t familiar with the name of the doctor who signed the death certificate. I asked who he was, was told he was a specialist in that kind of treatment, but I’d never heard of him. Never met him, either. Supposedly he flew in special from Saudi or some such bullshit. The rumor was he was somebody from USAMRIID or something, but I think that was just a crock. I don’t think the guy existed.”

Derek waited. When Davis didn’t continue, Derek prompted him. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I didn’t think Coffee was that bad. He had burns on his face from whatever the gas was, and there seemed to be some minor lung involvement and maybe some nerve trauma, but someone gave him a shot of atropine immediately and got him out of there. I thought Coffee would get some treatment for the chemical burns, spend some time breathing oxygen for the lungs and have a little therapy and he’d be okay. Next thing I know some doc I’ve never heard of signs off on his death certificate and the body is out of there.”

The bartender brought them their drinks. Derek took a sip of his coffee and set it down on the tin bar. It tasted like it had been made with lawn clippings. “Do you remember the name of the doctor?”

“No,” Davis said.

“Do the names Frank Halloran or James Scully ring a bell?”

“Nope.”

“How about Benjamin Zataki?”

“Yeah, rings a bell. He’s at USAMRIID now. But that wasn’t the name. I’m sorry, I just don’t remember.”

“Sure.” Derek thought for a moment. “Well, what do you think happened?”

“No idea.”

“Guess.”

“What’s this about, Mr. Stillwater?”

“I can’t say, but it’s important. It’s of national security proportions.”

“I see. Well, if I had to guess, I’d say for some reason they wanted people to think Coffee was dead. Like they were going to reposition him somewhere with a new identity.”

“Sounds ... I don’t know, Doctor. That sounds a little farfetched.”

Davis laughed. “You been in the military long? Were you
ever
in the military? Farfetched covers a lot of it. But you want to know what my bottom line is?”

“Sure.”

“Richard Coffee, to the best of my medical knowledge, was nowhere near death. Now, that isn’t to say I haven’t had seemingly healthy patients drop dead without warning. Maybe that’s what happened. But Coffee just seemed too healthy. He’d been exposed to some serious shit, but he got lucky. He seemed strong, clear, wasn’t having problems with his lungs or anything else. My biggest concern was long term.”

“Long term?”

“Yeah. You’ve been exposed to a mix of weird chemicals. You recover. Good for you. Then ten years later you get cancer. Or something else. I’ve heard neurologists speculate that some of this stuff could lead to mental problems, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorders, stuff like that. Cancer’s the easy shot, long term. But we know from a history of organophosphate case histories of pesticide research, that there’s more to it. And most chemical warfare stuff got their beginnings in the pesticide business. That stuff affects the nervous system, big time. Expose somebody to low-levels of some BW weapon and ten years later you might get a raving paranoid schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.”

“Swell,” Derek said. “Well, Doctor. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”

“Hey, no problem. Can I ask what this is about?”

“Oh, I just thought I had run into Richard Coffee.”

“Yeah? He seem okay to you?”

“No, Doctor. I wouldn’t say that at all. Thanks again.”

Davis knocked back his gin and tonic. “No problem. I’ll walk out with you. Got to go work out before I go home.”

Derek tossed a bill on the bar and followed the doctor outside. They began to walk down 19
^th
Street. Derek handed him a card. “If the name of that doctor comes back to you, give me a call.”

Davis took it. “Sure, no—”

Davis staggered backward, slamming against the redbrick wall of Jimmy’s before sliding to the ground. A blossom of scarlet appeared on his green scrub shirt. Derek glanced around, started to reach for Davis, when another bullet whined past him, tugging at his collar, chunking into the wall. He dived to the concrete, rolled, came up running. Another bullet ricocheted off a parking meter in front of him.

He slid behind a mini-van. Glass exploded above his head. The tire, only inches from his hand, sagged with a hiss. He was being bracketed.

He held his breath. Glancing back, he saw Davis was dead, blood everywhere. Somewhere somebody screamed. Another bullet whocked into the fiberglass body of the mini-van just inches from his head.

He sprang to his feet and sprinted down the sidewalk, bullets peppering the walls behind him.

To his left he saw motion, a Chevy Blazer. The woman at the wheel shouted, “Get in! Hurry!”

Another bullet ripped past him. He dived into the Blazer and it peeled away before he could get the door shut.

12

Frederick Municipal Airport

A
GENT
A
ARON
P
ILCHER SNAPPED
his phone off and stared out at the three white vans parked against the far wall. Beyond the vans was the main airstrip. As he watched, a small jet, probably a Lear, roared down the runway and lifted into the hazy dusk. Night was coming on.

The Frederick Municipal Airport was about 600 acres and catered mostly to private jets and the military, Ford Detrick being nearby. He didn’t like that this airport was so close to Detrick, home of USAMRIID. Didn’t like it at all. Maybe it was just a coincidence. The Frederick Airport was small and relatively near U.S. Immuno and dominated by small private aircraft. If he were a terrorist trying to make a hasty exit from the country, he might have preferred to charter a  private jet out of a small airport rather than fly commercial out of Dulles or Ronald Reagan.

Three flatbed trucks appeared one after the other at the mouth of the second level of the parking garage. From where he was standing on the other side of the garage, he saw Rodriguez wave them over. The ERTs had processed everything they could in situ, and wanted to move the vans to their lab before opening them up. They hadn’t even cracked the doors.

When Tres Rodriguez had told him that, Pilcher had raised his eyebrows. “Tres, we’re in a hurry with this. We can’t treat it like a typical criminal case.”

Tres was short, but short like a pit bull. Tres Rodriguez was as tenacious as a pit bull, too. He wore his curly dark hair close to his skull, his dark eyes slanting upward so he appeared vaguely Asian, though he insisted he was Mexican through-and-through. Tres and Pilcher had gone through Quantico together, sharing a dorm room. Their families got together a couple times a year, Pilcher and his wife and two daughters, Rodriguez with his wife and three sons.

“Aaron, my man,” Tres had said, putting on his jive ass Latina act like he did when he was about to insist on having things his way. “I am a fo-ren-sic ge-ni-us, certified by the eff-a-bee-eye of the U-nited States of A-mer-i-ca.. I—” He placed both hands on his meaty chest. “—am an ex-pert heah, mah man. I am not some Jew boy field agent who doesn’t understand the intricacies ... no, my man, the
mysteries
, of the fo-ren-sic sciences! I am the Magician of the Microscope, the Wizard of the—”

Pilcher waved his hand. “Jesus, Tres. If you’ll just shut up, you can do what you want.”

Tres grinned. “In the long run, it’s faster my way. We don’t screw around transporting evidence and risk contamination. Trust me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get on it.”

Pilcher didn’t think there was any long run. He hoped these terrorists and their stolen Chimera M13 took the first private jet to Korea or Iraq or Pakistan. That would be just fine with him. Did he really think those countries would use those things if they got hold of them? He hoped not, but you never knew. He knew that these miserable twits couldn’t feed their own people but they were perfectly capable of building atomic bombs and bioengineered super viruses.

What he did
not
want, what he was afraid they had, was exactly what Stillwater had been afraid of. A bunch of suicidal loons with a big, bad bug to let loose in his jurisdiction. He wondered what he would do, what he would say to his wife and daughters if it happened. He prayed it didn’t. Prayed he wouldn’t be forced into that situation. That nobody would.

Now, standing on the opposite side of the garage, he was trying to get hold of Spigotta. The reason he was standing so far away was because the reception in the parking garage was better on this side. Must be a cell antenna nearby somewhere. And also because Rodriguez could be a real prima donna and didn’t want field agents breathing down his neck while his team processed a scene. Pit bull, Pilcher thought with a grin. Only all bark and no bite. He flipped open his phone and called Spigotta at SIOC on the fifth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

“Yeah?” Spigotta snarled into the phone.

“I just got off the phone with Stillwater. He gave me a name,” Pilcher said.

“What name?” Spigotta sounded on the verge of a heart attack. On a good day he sounded like he might be having chest pains; today was not a good day.

“Richard Coffee. Apparently an old Army buddy of Stillwater’s. Thinks he might have disappeared into the CIA or something at the end of the Gulf War.” He filled in his boss on Military Intelligence’s odd behavior and the state of Coffee’s military records.

“You believe him?” Spigotta asked.

“No reason not to.”

“The USAMRIID people knew him. They say he’s good,” Spigotta said. “But a couple of them also said he’s a burnout. Seen too much.”

Pilcher shrugged, a gesture whose affect was lost on the telephone. “What do you want to do?”

“We’ll process the name. I need you here by eight o’clock. The Director needs a full brief before he heads to the White House. Full staff meeting at the White House at nine, everybody’s going to be there to update the President.”

“Yes sir.” Pilcher swallowed and turned to watch the flatbed trucks maneuver into position. The drivers were on their backs hooking chains to the first van’s frame. “I’ve got agents going over parking lot surveillance tapes here to see if we can get a look at these guys. And see if they’re still around.”

“Good. Keep me informed.” Spigotta clicked off.

Tucking his cell phone into his pocket, Pilcher headed toward the vans and the ERTs. He could hear the motor of the winch kick into action and begin to pull the first of the three vans onto the flatbed. Rodriguez was standing by the vehicle, supervising.

At the precise instant the van hit 33 degrees off level there was a massive ker-whump! and it exploded into a flaming ball of flying metal, fabric and plastic.

Seconds later the other two vans erupted into flame.

13/b>

Washington, D.C.

T
HE WOMAN RACED THE
Blazer through the D.C. streets, taking seemingly random turns whenever she could, glancing in the rearview mirrors often to check for someone following. In the passenger seat, Derek clutched the chain around his neck and tried not to think about bullets pinning him down, about the petals of blood exploding on Dr. Davis’s chest. Trying to keep his voice even, he said, “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe.”

He didn’t comment. His mind was spinning. It was like flying through a hurricane, looking for the eye. And then he found it, a center of calm surrounded by a whirlwind. He looked at her, taking in the shoulder-length dark hair, strong features made up of sharp nose, high cheekbones and square jaw. Her blunt fingers gripped the steering wheel. She seemed tough, maybe the set of that square jaw or the way her attention was focused on the road. In leather hiking boots, black jeans and a white button-down shirt under a leather bomber jacket, she projected an image of someone who could handle almost anything.

He reached over and tugged at the leather jacket. Her right hand shot out and brushed his hand aside, but not before he saw the grip of a matte-black semiautomatic in a shoulder rig.

“Who are you?” Derek repeated.

“Irina Khournikova.”

He thought she had a trace of an accent. The name and the accent pointed toward Russian.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m—”

”Doctor Derek Stillwater. Or do you prefer Professor?”

Derek lapsed into silence. His brain spun. The Blazer was still racing through the streets, never stopping or slowing. Irina Khournikova, or whoever she was, had perfected the rolling stop, never slowing more than twenty miles per hour, even at stop signs. “Let me out here,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“It is not safe.”

“Who are you?”

She brushed hair impatiently away from her face. Derek noticed a small C-shaped scar, very faint, on her right cheek. “You need to be briefed,” she said. “I didn’t imagine they’d go after you.”

“They?”

The Blazer zigged and zagged through city streets. Not comfortable in D.C. on a good day, Derek had lost all sense of direction except for the reddish glow of the setting sun to the west. The only comfort he felt was that his Colt was still on his hip under his jacket. It was his ace in the hole and he didn’t want to misplay his hand.

“Your own people,” Khournikova said. “The shooter back there.”

Derek settled his gaze on her. “You’re saying somebody from Homeland Security shot Dr. Davis?”