The tension returned to Khan in a jolt. His eyes grew wide. He felt sweat running in rivulets down his spine.

  “You were visited. By a Russian. He asked a favor of you.”

  “I can’t recall any…” Khan started.

  In one fluid movement the man stood and drove his fist into Khan’s chest hard enough to tip the doctor and his chair back onto the floor with a crash.

  Khan struggled to draw a breath and when he did it was like cold fire across his ribs. The man was poised over him with a cocked fist. The smile returned. White teeth flashing in a forest of black fur.

  “You are a doctor. You know that pain you are feeling. The next punch will bruise your heart. The one after that will stop it forever. Nod if you understand me.”

  Khan nodded with effort and dropped his head on the wooden chair back.

  “Now. Let us talk of the Russian and the favor he asked.”

  Over the beating of his heart Dr Parviz Khan could hear the gurgle of water. Outside this shabby room his precious jug was being overturned and the water running out onto the ground.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE BLACK SCYTHE

  The group in the dead room at CTU reconvened. Each had gone off to gather what intel they could on everything Colonel Nazir had testified to. His testimony checked out. The dates and names and places lined up. The timeline worked. They needed more to absolutely confirm that he wasn’t stringing them along. That was going to cost.

  It was agreed upon that their inquiries would be discreet and the group remained confined to those who had witnessed the live feed from the embassy in London. There was a brief discussion about roping in the Center for Disease Control.

  “No,” the grandma insisted. “There’s not one of those grandstanding assholes who could keep his mouth shut.”

  The agency deputy director gave the floor to the analyst most conversant with bioweapons. He was a bookish young man who looked to be barely out of high school. Rather than being a detriment to his credibility, his boyish appearance was a testament to his level of expertise. Only the brightest in their chosen fields reached this level of clearance, let alone entrée into a club as exclusive as the one in this room. The kid was a rising star.

  “The Black Scythe is a colorful comic book name for a weaponized virus first theorized by the Soviets and then, apparently, made real in labs in Iraq as supervised by Russian bio-techs on Saddam’s payroll. For a long time we thought it was just bullshit; more of Hussein’s inflated claims of having a scary arsenal of WMDs.”

  The NSA deputy flinched at that. “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was one of those taboo phrases that were only to be used in past tense and only when associated with a former president. He was the only purely political appointee in the room.

  “If Nazir is to be believed, the viro-weapon is very real,” the baby-faced analyst went on. “He has the dates and details correct. I strongly suggest we pay him and get him de-briefed on the full story as quickly as possible. My area is not Middle East politics but I know enough to know that we do not want this bug falling into the wrong hands.”

  “And all we have is wrong hands in that parish.” This from an analyst whose entire life was taken up by studying the events of the civil war in Syria since it began as a civilian riot in Aleppo two years prior.

  “Tell the room what the Black Scythe is,” the grandma said.

  “Basically, it’s a chimera,” the boy wonder said. “It’s a common organism genetically altered to hide a second organism within its DNA. In this case it is a common flu—like an avian or swine flu variety. But this one morphs into a species of hemorrhagic fever more akin to Ebola when a catalyst is introduced.”

  “And what kind of catalyst are we talking about?” the grandma prompted.

  “Well, this chimera is keyed to change over once it is introduced to any kind of flu vaccine. As any strain of influenza spreads from its source, the incidence of vaccination increases. The more people visibly suffering from the flu, the more healthy people rush out to get shots. It’s basic human behavior. ‘My neighbor is sick so I’ll run down to Walgreens and get a shot so I don’t catch it.’ But, as is often the case, a certain percentage of patients are in the beginning stages of the illness when they get the vaccine. In our scenario, they are already infected with phase one of the Scythe. This vaccine triggers phase two and their flu turns to something else. By the time they realize that their symptoms are far more severe than sniffles and the runs, they are bleeding out. Catastrophically.”

  The room grew quiet.

  “How contagious?” the agency deputy asked.

  “Phase one acts like influenza. It is influenza. Casual contact. Someone who has it wipes their nose or coughs into their hand and touches a doorknob and…well we all know what our mothers told us. But phase two is far more virulent as it progresses. Contact with any bodily fluids from a victim, no matter how casual, is almost certainly lethal. That includes blood. And with the Scythe there’s lots of blood. It attacks connective tissue. Its victims will appear to be sweating blood.”

  “It’s a double whammy,” the grandma added as much to fill the painful silence as to keep the discussion going. “It not only spreads through the populace at a rapid rate but it hides within another, more innocuous, ailment. Most people will not seek further medical help until after they have spread it to those near them.”

  “And we can assume that further medical help is pointless anyway?” the Syrian specialist said.

  “There’s no treatment but containment. The patient can only be quarantined in a Level Four facility until they die,” the grandma said. “And I don’t need to remind everyone that we are woefully short of those kinds of facilities.”

  “It’s actually a triple-whammy,” the boy wonder said apologetically. “It not only produces a weaponized, time-release pathogen with a ninety percent kill rate, but also utilizes our own system of vaccination—therefore creating the lethal byproduct of distrust in our abilities to combat it. People will believe that it is the vaccine that made them sick. Technically, they wouldn’t be wrong to believe that. We’ll see a breakdown in trust in our entire healthcare infrastructure. And a quadruple whammy when you consider that it is our medical professionals who will be most exposed before we’ve even identified the threat.”

  “And we’ve all seen contingency studies on how far and fast something like this could spread,” grandma threw in.

  “We’d be weeks behind the curve as the first cases began to appear,” the deputy agency director said tapping the table with his pen.

  “By the time we knew what was happening it would be too late,” grandma said.

  “Recommendations?” the NSA deputy said. “Give me something I can take back to Citadel that they can swallow without gagging.”

  “Pay Colonel Nazir and get a fix on the location where this pest is hidden,” the agency deputy said.

  “Then confirm the intel he gives us,” grandma said.

  “And how do we do that?” the NSA wonk said with a waggle of his head. “The president has handed off disposal of chem weapons to the Russians. Do we bring them in?”

  The agency deputy threw his pen across the room.

  “Hell no!” he shouted then recovered himself. “We do not let them anywhere near this. There is zero goodwill between us and Moscow and even less trust. In my opinion, there are already too goddamn many personnel in on this already. We need our people on it this instant. We need our eyes, and our eyes only, on site. We lock down the twenty on this stuff in-house.”

  “Then what?” the NSA wonk said, already wincing in anticipation.

  “We turn whatever desert shithole this stuff is buried in into a smoking hole,” the agency deputy said.

  Grandma nodded her approval at that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DAM NECK NAVAL STATION

  No shaves. No haircuts. The order of the day.

  The team was to keep the beards they had. If they were clean-shaven then they were to grow facial hair with haste. That meant Woody needed to sprout in a hurry. The rest of the team had hair that was already longer than regulation and they were encouraged to let it grow wild.

  An op was being laid on for them. Somewhere, spooks and fobbits were making their plans to send the SEALs into a shithole where angels feared to tread. Until the actual call-out came, the team had nothing to do but maintain. They ran in the mornings, followed by PT, then lunch, then a few hours on the range zeroing in new weapons that were assigned them—mission-specific weapons. They made themselves familiar with their own personal rifles.

  AK-47s and AKMs. Bad guy guns. The new op, unless it was cancelled or made redundant by politics or events, would be covert and undercover. The Kalashnikovs were no off-the-rack terrorist playthings. Though their finishes were worn and the furniture dented and scratched, the working parts of the weapons were state-of-the-science; built custom by an armorer under contract to Uncle Sugar. The receivers were reinforced and the barrel interiors chromed. From springs to levers to firing pins, they were after-market miracles that were more accurate, more reliable and just plain more badass than anything stamped out in Russia or China.

  After the range there was another run followed by an evening swim in the Atlantic. The team was ever-moving, ever-training and ever-ready. You never stopped becoming a SEAL. There was no completion date. The learning and forging didn’t end when the eagle and trident was pinned on. There were always improvements, individual and unit-wide, to be made.

  Jason Billings, AKA Woody, ran in the center of the pack down a broad sandy track that led to the beach. Priest was in the lead, as always. Chili just behind. At Woody’s back and close on his heels was Pig, followed by Heath bringing up drag. The sun was low over the dunes and cast long shadows off the saw grass. The air was rich with the tang of salt. Woody could hear the rhythm of the surf growing louder from the unseen sea somewhere over the marching hillocks of sand.

  He felt eyes on him as he ran. He was the new guy on the team. Though Woody was a full-fledged, born-again hard warrior out of BUD/S and SEAL training with some downrange time in the deep, deep shit, he was not what these men were. These men were gunfighters extreme. They were legends as much as men, whose names and deeds cannot be known, could be called that. Within the SEAL teams they were rock stars. Killers. The baddest motherfuckers of all the bad motherfuckers. Woody was here by chance and chance alone. His informal invite to join the team on an op in Afghanistan turned into the test that proved his mettle to these men. They were a man down now and the slot was his.

  Or was it? Surely there was a protocol to these things. There was tradition and protocol everywhere else in the Navy. Whether it was being reassigned or transferred, a mountain of paperwork and a sea of ink had to be moved. But the Team With No Name might be different. At least Woody was right to assume that it was. The SEALs in general, and this team especially, were given a leeway enjoyed in no other unit in any branch of service. Whether or not he joined these men was up to them and them alone. And so he was keenly aware that each move he made was being watched, studied and appraised. The trick for Woody was to pretend that this was not so. He’d just do what he did to the best of his ability and let that stand. If they welcomed him into their club, then he would work hard to earn that trust. If they decided against him, then he could live with that too. It was the success of their missions and their very lives they considered when vetting new members. Woody knew it wasn’t personal. It was business; the business of war.

  The track sloped down to a raised wooden walkway that stretched out to the white sand beach. The team broke into a sprint and pounded down the boards. They tightened up and were jostling for position on the narrow span. Woody ducked a digging elbow. He drove a shoulder into Chili’s ribs to slip past. He ran hard for Priest, who was maintaining a solid lead as they neared the beach. Woody leapt from the end of the walkway down three steps to land at Priest’s heels—still running. He launched himself like a spear for a gap at Priest’s side and brushed past the elder SEAL like a hurricane gust.

  Almost.

  Woody felt the instep of his right foot catch on something while on the upswing. He hopped one-legged in a pathetic attempt to remain upright before crashing face first in the sand. The following SEALs leapt over him and one even planted a sneaker on his spine to launch away laughing toward the surf. Priest, that crafty old seadog, had tripped him.

  The others were stripping out of sweats, hoodies and sneakers as Woody caught up with them at the water’s edge. He crashed through the waves seconds behind them; determined to close the gap in what was now an aquatic race for a float anchored five hundred yards from shore in the darkening sea.

  Woody ignored the shock of the frigid water. He told himself it only felt cold; that it was a mere twenty degrees below his body temperature. The cold of the water bit deep into leg and arm muscles heated from the run. He fought with every muscle against the push of the incoming tide. Still he worked into the rhythm of the swim with hands scooping and legs kicking—his eyes locked on the white foam churned up by the men before him. Woody stroked hard and joined the group, beating all but Priest and Chili to the anchored platform bobbing on the tidal swells.

  He lay back on the canvas-covered deck drawing in deep breaths from his exertions. Heath lay silent by him. Priest, silent as well, stood looking out to sea. Both men’s thoughts were their own. Chili and Pig sat at one corner of the float rubbing warmth back into their legs while revisiting one of their favorite arguments of who would beat who in a fight: Thor or the Hulk. To Chili it was idle speculation. To Pig, a lifelong comic book reader, it was close to a theological debate.

  Priest was the one who decided that rest time was over by plunging back into the water and making his way up a rising hummock of green-black sea for the faint lights of the shore. The others followed and Woody eased up to join the middle of the pack, stroking easy to keep Priest in sight.

  While they showered, Chili made a run into Virginia Beach for pizzas and beer. The unusual leniency allowed to SEALs included the permission to drink real beer while in uniform and even on base. Chili returned with a stack of pizzas loaded with the works and two chilled cases of Coors he snagged at a drive-thru ABC. They held their party in the common room of a barracks building that was theirs alone.

  In addition to their personal items and changes of uniform, the whitewashed building contained their call-out gear. The gear was in steel-caged lockers assigned to each of them and lined along one wall of the common room. Each cage had the owner’s name engraved in brass and riveted at the top of the swing door that remained locked when the gear was not in use. The tag that read LEVITZ, E was attached to the door of an empty locker. In a tradition going back to navies in the age of sail, Manny’s weapons, webbing, dive gear, ammo, books and pack were divvied up among his teammates as soon as they returned from downrange. The cage sat as a sad reminder of their loss.

  Woody’s gear was still in reinforced cases stacked by his borrowed bunk.

  Opposite the wall of cages was a workbench below a pegboard of tools. Mounted on the heavy timber top of the bench was a vice, as well as several pieces of reloading equipment belonging to Priest. The anal-retentive elder SEAL loaded most of his own ammo himself and made specialty rounds he shared freely with the others. His very own custom blend of smokeless powder was kept in a heavy safe beneath the bench and there were ammo containers of brass casings sorted into their various calibers and stacked in neat rows alongside the safe. A long picnic table was set all around with a variety of padded chairs liberated from local watering holes over the years. Near that stood a scarred ping-pong table. On the longest wall was a seventy-inch flat screen TV donated to them by a local appliance store after the Bin Laden killing. Not directly donated, of course. The SEALs discovered it hanging in the break room of an administration building on base and rescued it from that ignominy late one night in the blackest of black ops. The theft was the worst kept secret on base, but no one had cojones of the size required to question the SEALs’ possession of it.

  Football was on the giant TV now as the men lifted slabs of meat-laden pizza onto paper plates and cracked open Coors longnecks. Priest had his usual salad and roasted chicken, but joined them at the table and even surprised all in attendance by pulling a beer from the case at the end of the table.

  That should have been Woody’s first indication that this was not to be a typical bullshit session over suds and ’za. But his team, the Philadelphia Eagles, was playing and he allowed his usually sharp situational awareness to take a rest.

  They ate. They drank. And at halftime someone muted the big screen and all eyes turned to Woody.

  “What?” he said around a greasy mouthful of pepperoni and sausage.

  “You ever been in trouble, Billings?” Chili said. They didn’t use his SEAL name. It was like when his mom used his middle name. This was serious shit.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “You know. With the law,” Pig said.

  “The truth now. Not some bullshit you told the recruiters,” Chili said pulling his chair closer.

  “Nothing. Some fights at school. Pulled over for speeding once by Staties.”

  “What the fuck is this?” Heath said sharply. “You playing us some half-truths? This ain’t about was you caught. This is about did you do any crimes? Did you break the law and no one found out?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like rape. Robbery. Grass. Blow. Kill a guy.” Pig this time.

  “Shit. No.”

  “Now’s the moment. Now is the time to come to Jesus, pogue.” Heath staring at him, eyes empty like shotgun barrels.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “You like guys?” Pig straight-faced.

  “What?”